This is my surprised face: 
Hopefully this will make it clear that egregious behavior, contrary to horse welfare, will be brought to light and not tolerated.
I hope they have the book thrown at them. There is no excuse.
There is no excuse, I agree.
But here’s the problem. Making rules doesn’t mean people will follow them. They were never rule followers to begin with.
Anyway, I’m glad to see people being exposed.
I agree, HISA has their work cut out for them. Unfortunately racing can’t and couldn’t regulate themselves.
They need to clean up quick or racing will be no more.
While I’m not surprised : it makes me mad and sad : why can’t horse people/professionals be as wonderful as the horses they work with ?!
I happen to have known one of these people for over 30 years and while I am not condoning what happened I know for sure he isn’t one of the bad guys. I was in the same barn for years and his horsemanship was top notch.
Which one? The Vet, that could be counted on by so many trainers to break the rules? Or one of the trainers that took advantage of his willingness to break the rules?
It doesn’t seem that anyone of them are as “top notch” at this day and age, nor willing to play by the rules since HISA has been law.
I understand, the times they are a changin’.
None of your business
The difficult part is a lot of good people have to play the same game of over-reliance on medication and pushing withdrawal times to stay in business.
There are the truly bad ones out there, and then there are the ones who just love racing but have to make a living somehow. 
Wow. Ok. I’m sorry. You mentioned it, so I thought I’d ask.
I feel bad for their horses though.
I’ve had a good think about this, considering @Laurierace’s and @Texarkana reactions.
It’s easy for me to say (with the understanding that I don’t know any racehorse trainers personally and they do, I get that) but if trainers have to circumvent the rules and compromise the welfare of their horses to remain in business, they need to stop training.
Times have changed and the expectations of the way people treat their race horses have changed as well.
If, as a vet, the success of your practice depends on doing what this vet did, it’s time to retire.
As I said, I do not condone what they did, I am just saying this particular person is not one of the bad guys which means even the non bad guys screw up sometimes. It isn’t a normal practice for them. And no it wasn’t the vet who is in his 80’s and definitely should have retired a long time ago.
In all honesty, when is PA going to start getting their act together. It might as well be a bush track at this point. The laundry list of issues within their racing jurisdiction is ever growing, perhaps one of the worst in the country?
And then we have people within the industry here on COTH defending them because their “horsemanship was top notch” and “they are not one of the bad guys”. What they were knowingly doing says otherwise and until the industry stands together against animal abuse for the sake of greed; nothing will change and this type of press will only further hurt your beloved sport.
You are ASSuming the knowingly part of your statement.
I am sorry Laurierace but how does someone not know they are doing off the record injections in horses’ joints right before a race? bottom line, the horse was in their care and they are responsible for it and what happens to it within their stable. Much like the Bob Baffert medication issues.
Just throwing this out there:
Sometimes there is pressure from the owners. Sometimes there are suggestions from vets or other individuals that you don’t entirely realize are problematic because of the way they are presented.
When you are a small stable running for small purses, the bottom line can be incredibly tight.
I’m not defending the practice or whomever this individual may be. I’m just saying I understand the challenges of managing a small claiming stable and why we have this over-reliance on pharmaceuticals.
This is a hard problem to fix.
Someone like Baffert is conditioning horses from a very different vantage point.
Drugs is drugs is drugs, regardless of the motivation. A big name trainer “conditioning” a potential Classic winner is really no different from a small stable using drugs to get a broken horse into a claiming race. Both are about making money. It is a problem that is hard to fix because the racing culture is habituated to using pharmaceutical assistance throughout the US racing industry. There are some standouts but most even seem to suggest drugs are used for the benefit of the animals.
I’m going to respectfully disagree that “drugs is drugs is drugs, regardless of the motivation.”
I do agree that we have habituated using pharmaceuticals.
Drugs can be used to benefit the animals. The problem is, American culture always embraces the mindset, “if a little is good, a lot must be better.” Or the philosophy, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
If a horse is experiencing arthritic changes, a joint injection can make a world of difference in the horse’s comfort. But then “we” start doing it routinely and relying on it and even get to the point where we are doing it prophylactically to enhance performance. If we could find a way to keep the first option while preventing the latter alternatives, that would truly be the best case scenario. But it’s hard to put the lid back on Pandora’s Box, so to speak.
