No, you have not. You’ve never owned, trained, galloped, groomed or hotwalked on the track. You certainly have never paid the bills on a race horse.
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Snaffle, you sure like to spend other people’s money. Anything besides nuke scans that you want as a normal diagnostic battery? The backstretch vets would love you.
And please take this in the spirit in which it is meant–20 years ago I was you. I knew it all. I was so full of myself. Just ask me and I could tell you chapter and verse of what should be done. It was all so clear.
Then I became the person responsible for the decisions and I am telling you, it is NOT as cut and dried as you imply. Also I am not convinced that the best care is to be found in the barns of the Big Name Trainers at the fanciest tracks. That’s just snobbery speaking. I’ve employed a baker’s half dozen of trainers and the one in the Hall of Fame that everyone would know was the one who didn’t win for me and he had seven shots at it.
Forgive me but the only reason I’ve started to share more is not to hear my keys clack but I think that people with experience aren’t sharing enough and it is leaving a void. I don’t have all of the answers but I have some background and sometimes for the good of the sport as a whole, we need to inject a little reality.
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Snaffle, the problem with all of your posts is that you start with the assumption that racehorse owners don’t care about their horses.
Then you jump quickly to the next assumption–that it’s just all about the money.
Let’s stop for a minute and think about the reality of being a racehorse owner.
Very very few people make money racing horses. The percentage who do is miniscule. Yet people continue to own racehorses anyway.
There are also easier ways to lose money than owning racehorses. Yet people continue to do it anyway.
Why do you suppose that is? Maybe those people actually like horses. Maybe they enjoy being around them and they want to do their best for them (not just the million dollar horses but the everyday runners too). It would be nice if once in a while you considered that possibility.
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My husband would prefer if I just started lighting my money on fire rather than putting it in race horses. :lol:
My luck has been below average, but I’ve yet to make a single penny. However, plenty of them have been spent (I try not to think about that part too much). And I’m just a peon in the sport.
I don’t know anyone in the industry who doesn’t make soundness a priority. Lame horses are useful to no one. The problem is, “making soundness a priority” doesn’t always look the same for every horse in every situation. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a horse where you couldn’t find the problem despite all the diagnostics in the world.
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The problem with Snaffle’s posts is that Snaffle has no real life experience with race horses, and just reads stuff online and passes judgment on everyone down in the trenches who are actually doing the work. Snaffle has never owned a race horse, or worked on the backside. Ever. Not for one minute.
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Please. Don’t act like an outraged PETA-member. We know you are better than that.
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Snaffle just might need to visit a low end track and witness some of the butt-chewings trainers hand out to grooms who don’t do things the right way. Critics such as this poster should realize that trainers can’t make a living with an empty stall and that keeping their horses sound and healthy as possible is paramount, even at the bottom. As in life, knowledge, experience, and resources (especially) can be unequal, but that in no way is an indication that someone doesn’t care.
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LaurieB; that is not what I said at all. not. at. all. My entire post basically summed up the need for improvement across the board. You also generalize racehorse owners in an entirety which is unfair. I think there are a lot of good people in racing, who do right by their horses, and ensure top level care to minimize risk.
But in hindsight there is a lot of ugly in the industry. A lot of people on the backsides of the low ranking tracks all across this country who should not have a trainers license and be entrusted to the care of a ferrari. You come from a decently well-off background and your horses live a good life, Laurie. You do right by them and you have the means to ensure you do. But much of what is on the backside in many barns of the low ranking tracks can be down right sad. And I am saying to skip over the few well known trainers at these tracks and start paying attention.
I have walked the backsides of a few. I have had “trainers” trying to hand me horses to take home for free or beg me to do so. Horses that seemed in good health and good care but were noticeably lame and unsound. I have had trainers on these backsides have lame horses diagnosed with tendon issues tell me to “hurry up and take the horse so they can get rid of it”. They didn’t know who I was or where the horse would be going. No, I didn’t take the horse, and I can only imagine where it did end up. I’ve seen horses with ankles the size of softballs and still pound away at the track. Horses who are underfed. Horses who are entered to race almost every week or every other week with minimal upkeep on a daily basis. And I have heard plenty of stories of the infamous trailer that comes around every few weeks and picks up horses from each barn to go off to the killers.
I fully understand that racing horses is not a lucrative business decision. If you have money to piss away, this is the sport for you. The vast majority of owners who do have horses at the tracks in this country own them as a hobby to “say they have a racehorse”.
But the lack of funds coming in from purse winnings does not warrant lesser care. And to insinuate that it does is despicable. This goes along with the old saying: if you cant afford to feed it and maintain it, you shouldn’t own it.
As I noted in my earlier post; there are plenty of good trainers on every track regardless of status. BUt there are just as many ugly scenarios. If this sport has any chance in hell of surviving long term and having public support to do so; the industry as a whole needs to be constantly looking to improve. So far; all I see is excuses and little motivation to say “yea the industry could do better”.
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Never owned race horses. Always have had friends involved both racing and breeding… My college was involved in research project at Santa Anita, spent quite a bit of time there one semester. Go to races, watch races enough to see breakdowns and to form an opinion just not the long personal experience of some real experts on here.
Just a 50year show horse owner usually in bigger barns and in that time have seen a 3’ Hunter come home from a vet clinic and 2500 PPE (12 years ago) with extensive imaging, step off the trailer and be led into a paddock for a roll take a little buck and snap a foreleg. Saw a horse finish the exhausting task of jumping 8 2’6” fences with 2 lead changes at about an 8mph lope, walk out of the ring, get a peppermint and drop stone cold dead right there. Dear friend turned her two out, went for coffee, returned 30 mins later to find a shattered shoulder on one, kick probably. Week after my lease ran out on one, it turned up with a fractured hock, best guess fence post, possibly kicked. I could go on.
Point being if you are around enough horses for enough years you see things from a different perspective. Horses get hurt, they die, often with nothing or nobody at fault. Yes, Racing needs to get itself out of the dark ages of “but that’s the way we’ve always done it” and if you don’t think the other disciplines and too many owners have the same problem, you haven’t spent enough time around them. We all can do better. But sensational statements and selective statistics is not the way. Most tracks, if not all, require necropsies of breakdowns during races and the percentage compared to total starters has remained pretty constant.
And just to be clear, I agreed with the DQ in the Derby.
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As I noted in my earlier post; there are plenty of good trainers on every track regardless of status. BUt there are just as many ugly scenarios. If this sport has any chance in hell of surviving long term and having public support to do so; the industry as a whole needs to be constantly looking to improve. So far; all I see is excuses and little motivation to say “yea the industry could do better”.
@snaffle1987 , please name one segment of the horse ‘industry’ to which the above does not apply.
Just one.
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Own enough horses and you learn the witching hours. For horses on the racetrack, it is between 6 AM and 10 AM. That’s from when the bandages come off to the end of training that morning. Make it through that timeframe without a phone call and chances are good that all is well. Breeding farms and layups can be any time but true emergencies seem to happen in the wee hours. When a farm manager is calling at 1 in the morning, it is not to chat.
Over the last two years, I’ve lost 3 horses–4 really with an unborn foal–and none on the racetrack. Before that I had a really good run and hadn’t lost any since a baby ran into a fence in 2005. I’ve gotten I don’t know how many emergency calls and none have been broken legs. It was horse stuff. A colt at the track shows signs of colitis and had to be rushed to the hospital. Another was colicing and had to go to the hospital. A weanling managed to puncture her eye and spent almost a week in the Alamo Pintado ICU getting hourly lavages to save her eye. A mare foaled normally but ruptured her uterine artery. A young horse ran into a fence and severed the nerve in his leg. A mare–my favorite mare–suddenly became ill and collapsed and died on a horse trailer to the hospital. A necropsy showed unsuspected kidney disease. Personally I think she ate something that drifted into her pasture but it doesn’t really matter now.
Why am posting this? Because some people here seem to think we just sit and count our money. Yeah maybe as it is going out of my wallet.
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In reading your post I get the feeling that you believe there are at least 50% of the “people on the backside” who are problematic in the race horse industry.
As LaurieB said, there are problem people in life, not just horses. Yes, there are problem people at race tracks that don’t do right by their horses.
I suspect the number that doesn’t do right is far less than 50% of the participants. There aren’t ‘a lot’, there are ‘a few’. There are ‘plenty of good’ trainers but there are a ‘few who are ugly’.
I suspect you will disagree but I also personally suspect if you trot out to a few tracks with a note pad and really evaluate and count the ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ behavior, good will far outweigh bad. I also personally suspect that your view is influenced by what you’ve seen. You remember the ‘bad’ things while the ‘good’ things often get overlooked or unnoticed.
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Snaffle has seen very very little of the racetrack compared to the horsemen who have worked on the backside 6-7 days a week, 12+ hours a day for years. Snaffle spends more time on a soapbox than in a barn.
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Bolding is my interjections Sorry!
I hope nobody watched the latest catastrophe at Santa Anita, where the poor guy (a gray–I have a gray OTTB who broke his left front ankle) fell, got up, and ran around in bewilderment with his left from leg flopping around. It was heartbreaking. Stronach again–they own Santa Anita AND Pimlico.
When was this?
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Not saying it didn’t happen, but please provide a link.
The latest breakdown reported is Kochees, during the 6th race on Saturday.
