Fair enough.
I will agree there is a culture that needs to be changed. However, I don’t agree with most of the “hows” being suggested recently in this conversation.
Has anyone googled this? I’m assuming everyone involved in the thread has googled the 30 or so horses that died this year but I was wondering about historically? I am assuming that many of the deaths may have been preventable. These are very young horses that are under a ridiculous training regimen and then depending on what they come back with regarding the track conditions - but they weren’t all dead from injuries caused on the dirt track - some were on the turf track and some were not on a track at all.
I thought - I wonder if social media just opened our eyes to a problem that has been around for a very long time and maybe this number isn’t all that high? Like how many horses die on Santa Anita each year? I have googled it a million ways and can’t find anything. Has anyone seen anything on the historical numbers? I wonder what they are?
This news article does say 36 died there in 2018.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/santa-anita-race-track-25-horses-died-in-racing-or-training-at-santa-anita-in-5-months/
If they had to do it to keep their licenses, they would find time. Other professions do it, and while people gripe, they attend.
Instead of defending, defending, defending the doings of the industry for the sake of how it has always been done
I am going to put the ball in your court. Since all of you are so fine tuned as to the happenings within the industry; WHAT DO YOU THINK SHOULD BE DONE. Step by step, what would you do? What would you do if you were in control of the happenings at Santa Anita. What would you do across the board in racing to improve the integrity of the sport, improve horse welfare, and improve trust from the betting public.
And don’t say that things are fine the way they are. If you feel that way; the sport deserves to take a tail spin into oblivion
Even at the cheapest tracks in the area I have never seen a vet who wasn’t willing to come take a look at any horse for any reason and do an examination for absolutely nothing.
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If you are correct and Dr. Bramlage is correct, then the only logical conclusion is that many trainers whose horses go on the vet list deliberately CHOOSE not to involve veterinary professionals.
I don’t think any vet is going to do it for free. There are liabilities and they have a business to run but most tracks have onsite vets.
I trained for over 20 years so my experience trumps your “I don’t think.” One of my vets stopped by my barn 7 days per week and asked how things were and if there was anything I needed them to look at that day. Even on Christmas someone stopped by.
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How about they go on the vet’s list because whatever they are on the vet’s list for happened right then and there? We aren’t all money grubbing aholes who duct tape our horses together and hope they make it around.
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Was there some sort of contract? I actually worked at a race barn for a few years myself. We did not have a vet that stopped by daily and offered free veterinary service BUT the tracks that we raced at did have onsite vets.
No there was no contract. That is what vets do on the racetrack. Note I said free exam, I did not say diagnostics and treatment would be free.
I don’t know what you mean by having onsite vets at the track but assume you are talking about the state vets. Those are free as well.
No one is saying things are fine the way they are. We are saying your proposals aren’t based on reality.
What would I do? This is not Santa Anita-specific, but…
- I would fight for a national governing body so that we are all on the same page with rules and regulations.
- With that national governing body, I would have a uniform requirements for data collection and reporting for the equine injury database.
- I would reduce the number of racing dates in this country.
- I would do away with the current system of housing horses on the racetrack.
- This is my own pet problem, but oh my god I’d fire 90% of the farriers working in the industry and start over training a new generation. (I get raked over the coals for saying this all the time; most don’t agree with me.)
- To fix integrity, I would fire every single PR person currently working in racing… seriously, all of them. They are terrible. They have always been terrible.
Specific to Santa Anita, I’d do more or less exactly what they are doing, but with better PR. I’d also go through the historical data regarding rainfall and track integrity with a fine tooth comb, because you will not otherwise convince me what we saw this winter wasn’t primarily related to the rainfall.
Feel free to ask me to expand on any of those points. I was trying to spare everyone the novella.
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and you and I can agree on all of those points. Curious as to what your reasoning is for removing on-track housing for horses and what the basis is for that.
I’ll respond to individuals later this evening, but I do have to laugh at the couple of people here who are saying that trainers must be kept up to date on the latest techniques and medications, yet Lasix was a great advancement in the prevention of EIPH and the do-gooders want to take it away. That’s fence post dumb.
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wrong. Blood Buffer is a product used to reduce lactic acid accumulation in the muscle. Lactic Acid is produced as a protectant for the muscle. It is released before significant damages can be done to the muscle. Any animal is born with an inherited or capped level of LA tolerance. You can screw with lactic acid buildup using products like Blood Buffer or illegal milkshaking a horse but you are inherently putting a horse at risk to further damage muscle or a tendon tissue. Training and conditioning does not necessarily change LA tolerance much more than miniscule amounts, training and conditioning only trains muscle and muscle fibers to create a desirable result. this is the same in any animal, including humans. But you can medicate to surpass that inherited LA tolerance. It is genetically proven than some specific families of racehorses are more genetically predisposed to issues with tying up because their inherited tolerance of LA is small in comparison to others.
When you use Bicorbonate to increase the Acid tolerance in the muscles, you are bypassing mother natures own design to protect the body. by doing so, you risk significant muscle damage, tendon damage and in the case of horses; the potential for a fatal breakdown due to one of those issues. For the betting public, its a cheating issue: bicarbonate tricks the body into thinking its not fatigued and a horse can race “better” because of it.
Blood Buffer IS sodium bicarbonate. the primary ingredient when Milkshaking horses is Sodium Bicarbonate. Blood Buffer is given in an oral Syringe. Milkshakes are administered via gastrictube. Blood Buffer gets its name by doing exactly what Milkshaking is intended to do…buffer blood to remove lactate.
I think housing horses on-site is a two-fold problem.
Racetrack management needs to fill races in order to make a profit. Not a criticism, just economics 101. But one way they have gone about filling their races is with their political games over stalls. Some places it is worse than others. I don’t think those political games are in the best interest of the horse, especially in the case of smaller operations.
I usually lose people with my second part: I don’t think living at the racetrack 24/7 is best for soundness. You are limited in how/where/when you can train your horses. Trainers do a brilliant job making it work, but it takes a lot of effort.
I don’t think all training centers are inherently better; there are plenty of “bad” training centers out there. The other problem with training centers right now is that you can’t always draw into the races you want because of the aforementioned politics.
Yet I think if we completely abandoned the current method of housing racehorses, we could correct the shortcomings of training centers. Especially if the NGB regulated them and the tracks were required to put some money towards infrastructure.
Most other developed countries have moved away from the on-site racetrack housing paradigm. :yes:
I am also a product of Fair Hill Training Center, as well as several other private training centers in the mid-Atlantic, so I am biased. We had overwhelmingly happier and sounder horses than those I worked with directly on the track. That’s not to say horses don’t thrive at the track… many do. But I still think you can be more accommodating in a training center lifestyle.
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I don’t know of any vet who would argue the “dangers” of sodium bicarbonate. Nothing about administration of sodium bicarbonate is inherently dangerous. There is a performance enhancing component.
It was the physical practice of milkshaking that led to banning and subsequent testing, because passing an NG tube regularly, often times by lay people, is incredibly dangerous. And the fact that you’re doing it explicitly for performance enhancing reasons.
Kind of a moot point though, since Blood Buffer Formula #2 contains no bicarb, just “choice alternative buffers” so it won’t test.
The rules say a trainer can’t orally dose a horse with anything 24 hours before a race, plain and simple.
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Bramlage basically said that horses get put on the vet list because a vet has seen something in their gait that is NQR.
Often, as I understand it, there’s a jog for the vets before a horse is raced, and that’s how horses get on the vet list. One doubts that a gait abnormality would suddenly appear when the horse is jogged but not before or after. Surface, I will admit, can make a difference, as can farrier work. But if a state vet believes there is something fishy, why isn’t the obvious and reasonable thing doing diagnostics? I’m sure many, maybe most trainers, will do that, but Bramlage feels that not enough do and would sit the horse down for 90 days if diagnostics aren’t done.
Nobody would dare say that Bramlage is qualified to have opinions.
@vineyridge the reason you think I wasn’t clear is because you have taken my words very much out of context.
If you will read what I said for comprehension, you will see that I was talking about the sharing of information.
If you ever spend time on the backside of a track you will realize that each day is a course in continuing education. Every morning trainers, vets, jockeys, exercise riders, jockey agents, farriers, medical supply salesmen, etc. etc are in a constant state of motion between the barns and the track–and they are constantly discussing those new developments and advances you think trainers are so unaware of. It’s amazing how quickly new info get passed around.
PLEASE DO NOT PUT WORDS IN MY MOUTH TO SUIT YOUR OWN AGENDA.
It all depends on whether one takes a long or short view of the effects of Lasix. If there is a genetic component to EIPH, allowing horses to run on Lasix distorts and improves their performances. Without Lasix, EIPH is a performance detriment, and EIPH horses are less likely to be bred. Thus, fewer horses will carry the genetic component of EIPH. In the long view, Lasix would seem to weaken the breed as a whole, given the emphasis on breeding for performance.
