Why haven’t animal abuse or neglect charges been brought up?? I can’t imagine someone drugging their dog for dog agility comps & being caught multiple times but no mention of neglect? Especially with substances like cocaine. Maybe it does happen with other animal hobbies/sports -I don’t know. But if we don’t purge this garbage from our sport we will eventually have to face extreme scrutiny and judgement from outside voices, peta being an example.
I am also not one to dictate one’s personal life choices (i.e. drug use) but if cocaine is found in a horse’s system, is the DEA notified? Or at least law enforcement? How can this be swept under the rug and the consequence is a showing suspension when people are regularly jailed for the same substance, not to mention DRUGGING an ANIMAL!! Absolutely disgusting.
And to try to blame it on a groom? Shameful. Must have incredibly wealthy grooms to just leave around large enough quantities of coke in a horse’s stall/feed for it to show up on a drug test.
When I saw this news I wondered: at what number of suspensions or violations over the course of a lifetime does USEF begin to consider banning an individual entirely? Three? Six? Never?
In many states, if you get three DUIs you lose your license. It doesn’t seem insane to me to propose that a competitor who recieves three or more horse doping violations should no longer be permitted to compete at USEF shows.
“Pay the fine, serve your suspension, and resume your business” seems suitable for plenty of offenses. People buy the wrong antibiotic ointment, or lash out at their horse on a terrible day, or fall under the spell of a convincing trainer with a syringe. We all make mistakes - that is what justice systems are built to deal with.
But when folks have decades of repeated infractions, and USEF allows them to continue to return to competition again and again, you have to ask what their continued inclusion in the national federation says about USEF’s priorities and about the sport as a whole. Are they dedicated to fair sport and to horse welfare? What about this pattern indicates that?
I really only had a couple of questions when i heard this.
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If/When does law enforcement get involved? Since it is an illegal substance.
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How many suspensions does it take till you get banned from the USEF?
It isn’t just the Glefke-Farmers of the sport. It’s the entire culture that has to change. It starts with the owners. The owners pay for it all. The owners have the opinions and wants that matter the most. I wish more owners understood that.
Regarding law enforcement getting involved, let’s all calm down a little and think about this logically: no actual cocaine was found anywhere on any person. Metabolites of cocaine were found in urine samples taken from a horse. The DEA is not going to swoop in and arrest — who?? The horse? The owner? The rider? The trainer? The groom? See what I mean?
Having said that, these two are disgusting and should be banned from competition for life. It’s really too bad that enough of the show hunter community is so supportive of them that their sales business seems to be thriving, but I guess that goes to show that those two are far from anomalies in this business.
Goes back to penalizing the owners of record or nothing is going to change.
Law Enforcement is not really interested in an animal with traces of an illegal substance, they might act if a criminal complaint was filed but with no way to prove who, when and even in what jurisdiction it was administered? May as well just charge the horse with possession. Not going to happen.
My, my. She sure is on her way to becoming our very own HJ Joan Kennedy. Do you think she has an ice machine in her glove compartment yet? Praise be and carry on y’all.
I know this has been discussed elsewhere, but I just keep wondering why aren’t all National and Intl Derby winners at A and AA shows tested? I know we still need random testing, but can’t some of the random testing $$$ be diverted? I’d gladly pay and extra $20 a year to have this testing done or add it to show fees for those classes…
And yes, i think the horse should be suspended too–until owners start to care, nothing will change.
Kinda off topic…
what are your thoughts on if a horse is drug tested at a show… should it be put on their usef show record?
This way if your looking up a sale horses record… it would note: not just the show results for a particular show, but also state if the horse was tested and if it was negative or if positive, what it tested for.
Just, seems like it would be nice to know.
@AllOverFarm I like the way you think. I’d also like the responsible party’s name next to that record, too.
It’s hard to even tell what infractions people have had, because they’re not searchable. Even the suspension Farmer & Glefke are both currently serving doesn’t have hearing information online anymore. The only record of it available to anyone is the news stories about it. That’s not OK. It’s fine if they want that information behind the paywall of USE membership, but it should be available and a part of the record forever.
Part of this discussion should be how many strikes you get before you’re out for good. At some point after multiple infractions for banned substances you need to say enough is enough, these folks are obviously never going to play within the rules.
Truth.
Can’t imagine buying one of their horses, I don’t have a pharmaceutical background.
I would think that the DEA or police might be interested in getting a warrant to poke around in their trailer, tack room, feed room, or hotel rooms?
Not for a violation that happened months ago. I don’t think law enforcement has the resources to go on, what is essentially at this point, a fishing expedition.
Real life is not like Law and Order. No judge is going to sign a search warrant for trailers, tack rooms, and hotel rooms because a horse’s urine tested positive for metabolites of cocaine.
I think that was literally a mid '90s episode of Law and Order. 
Wasn’t the horse’s name something like Mr. Winkles?
Google says Mr. Wickets…close enough!
If people are upset about this, they should contact USEF directly through letters to Murray Kessler and others involved with the decision.
It appears as if USEF is more interested in avoiding lawsuits than in punishing people appropriately for multiple drug infractions. Give a BNT a slap on the hand so they are suspended for only a short period of time and fined a minimal amount of money and there will be no reason for them to change. Ban them for an extended period of time or permanently and we may see some real progress in horse welfare. However, that may open USEF to lawsuits from BNT’s who will almost certainly fight back.
There is a lot of complaining on COTH about how bad things are but until people start speaking up to USEF, things will carry on as they always have.
and about the owners? Yes, they do have the power, but if they are more interested in winning than they are in horse welfare, nothing will change.
A steeplechase trainer was set down recently by their organization for horse abuse. Suspended for one year. They can reapply for their trainer’s license after the one year suspension expires. However, there is talk that their license may or may not be reinstated when they reapply for it. This means in theory that their organization could continue to ban that person permanently by simply refusing to reinstate their license without actually calling it a permanent ban.
USEF needs to put more teeth behind its drug infraction punishments otherwise they look like a joke.
As far as I’m concerned, they can’t throw the book hard enough at the cheaters. If they are cutting corners in the show ring, imagine what is going on at home to keep the horses quiet and rideable. There is no excuse for such poor, incompetent horsemanship.
