For the amount of public flack that the racing industry gets, IMHO, they are not going to put down their prized multiple graded stakes winner/supersire stallion just because he is pensioned. A lot of these connections do very well by their horses after they retire. Some are sent to Old Friends, some enjoy retirement in their racing or breeding stable.
I think that a lot of the big stables do everything in their power to ensure that those greats, like AP Indy, enjoy a long-lived retirement. He has been pensioned for what, six years? Still enjoying the good old life. Same went for Storm Cat (now deceased) and many others.
The bigger killer seems to be laminitis and complications from laminitis.
Of course, there are hundreds that do not do well by their horses – but they’re very rarely the Top breeding/racing connections…
pedigree is Lido Palace (Mr. P through Forty Niner) X Cox’s Ridge X Graustark (Ribot) so a little conventional and a whole lot of not conventional. It sucks for me, but Mr.r Early Retirement Plan is rather enjoying life these days AND is an easy keeper, so there is that…
The number of sires who made any kind of genetic impact on the breed and were put down because they were pensioned approaches zero. Nobody does that to a prominent sire. Or mare. This is an industry that cherishes their icons. I’m not saying they cherish all TBs, but their icons? Hell yes.
I read this article a few months ago, and I have a mare we are trying to figure out what’s up with her, and even though the vets don’t seem excited about this possibility, I can’t get it out of my mind. Hmmmmm.
Very interesting indeed. wish WikiLeaks would hack into her research and publish the stolen data for the benefit of the horse world and maybe save some human lives.
I believe this could be much more prevalent than we want to believe.
That is interesting. My Seattle Slew son (the original Bay With Chrome) also had neck arthritis. He had a good race career and good show career but retired a little earlier than I would have liked. It did not show up until later for him but sometimes I wondered if it was always there and explained why collection was so hard for him.
Saint Balladoo also had surgery, actually you probably would (or not) be surprised at the number of horses who quietly went off and had that surgery in the early days of the procedure.
My horse Star, a TB-WB cross (pedigree link) had some sort of malformation in C-6/7. Can’t remember the details unfortunately. He stumbled pretty much from the time he was started under saddle. For years we thought he was just a klutz, until a bone scan and then radiographs revealed the abnormality when he was 12. Neck injections rendered him rideable, and non-stumbling, and lasted about a year. I did them once more and then retired him when he was 14. He passed a neuro exam, except that he refused to wear a blindfold. I never got him jumping again after discovering the neck issue. Had I been bright enough to have the entire horse scanned the first time he strained his collateral ligaments when he was 9, we probably would have found the neck then and maybe things would have ended up differently.
A second horse, Skipper, a TB with fairly atypical bloodlines for a modern racing TB, which he was not (pedigree link) had arthritis in his neck at C-5,6.7, which we found when he was four and NQR behind. He passed the neuro exam until asked to walk blindfolded down a hill, whereupon he exhibited hypermetria with his front limbs I rehabbed him from the medley of issues we found at that time, got him going under saddle after two years (rehab, more rehab, Dr. Green), whereupon the same issues recurred within a year. By then the neck radiographs were much worse. Not sure he had the malformed cervical vertebra or not. I had him euthanized shortly after his 7th birthday. Oddly, although he did kind of lean against his stall wall, presumably for balance, he never felt unstable under saddle.
I posted something about 30 minutes ago, complete with pedigree links for the two horses, which it said was on the next page. It also says that I am subscribed to the thread (even before I posted this). But I can’t see my post. Can anyone else see it?
Edited to add that I can see THIS post, but not the one I posted earlier.
And edited again to note that it has now appeared, right above this post, so stamped at the time I originally posted it.
Peggy, sometimes stuff gets hung up as unaccepted, and the mods have to clear it. It’s part of the new spam reducing efforts, and kicks in with links (sometimes!) Probably that?
But since we’re talking about pedigrees, here is my “neck horse”:
This is fascinating. I have a semi retired TB. We never did any diagnostics because they wouldn’t have changed the course of action, but we believe there are issues at the base of his neck. I wouldn’t confidently say this was the issue, though.
DMK-sorry to hear about Lido. I knew something was up, but had no idea it was this
Star’s neck issues became more apparent after he was put under general anesthesia in May 2011 to repair a broken jaw. Struggling to get free of the chain on his stall that he grabbed probably didn’t do his neck any favors either. He was never quite the same after that incident.
Thanks rugbug, I am having soooo much fun with xander, so that helps (I’m smitten).
Years ago when I was still working at a layup barn (ok, decades ago) I remember an article about wobblers and some consideration that the cervical anomaly might be dormant until a mild injury to the neck triggered more severe symptoms. In Lido’s case I can’t point to one instance like anesthesia but I’ve always wondered if there was a pasture crash that precipitated the change…
Simkie, look at us with a turn to x ribot nick … literally the one cross you would love to see in a warmbood as well
The statement I bolded couldn’t be more incorrect.
No reputable breeder puts down a stallion because his breeding life is over. It doesn’t happen, barring the rare schmuck or scumbag. Schmucks and scumbags are found in every facet of the horse world.
I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by the statement, but it has me so angry I could spit nails. These stallions are cherished, yet everyone thinks of Ferdinand or the Alydar conspiracy theories (which are just that- conspiracy theories). Meanwhile, you have pensioners in their 20s and 30s living the life of Riley at just about every major breeding farm.
These stallions work hard. There is a reason every bag of feed shows increased nutrient demands for breeding stallions, and no one works harder than a successful thoroughbred stallion. A lifetime of exertion takes its toll on an animal.
With that said, I can think of at least a half dozen (or more) prominent TBs who have undergone cervical surgery for neuro issues. None of them are similarly bred in the first few generations.
I would suspect this genetic link extends faaaaaar back in time in the breeding pool… not sourced from a modern stallion. Especially if TB blood is the carrier of the malformation in WBs, QHs, and an unknown number of STBs; none of those breeds have been heavily influenced by modern stallions (Mr. P et. al). The prevalence in Arabs is interesting-- makes me wonder if that was where the malformation originated or if there was undocumented cross contamination of the bloodlines in the the hundreds of years before DNA testing.
With funding, shouldn’t we be able to isolate the genetic source of this through DNA testing? Carriers, non-carriers, etc.
:yes: