[Brillopad]

Originally Posted by DemolitionRed

I've had a lot of dealings in the horse trade including racing yards and if people knew what happened to these beautiful beasts after their racing career is over, they'd be shouting loudly about it... and so they should.

A horse that is bred to race is backed (saddled and ridden) as a two year old. None race horses are backed between the age of three and four so their bones, especially their spines, have matured well. These young horses, if they do survive past the race course, will likely suffer from spinal and pelvic pain for the rest of their miserable lives.

Young mares that have done well will be used in the breeding pool but most horses don't do well and they either end up in the abatour or sold for pennies to some novice who thinks its cool to own an ex race horse. But it gets worse and I've seen this with my own eyes. The better a horse does on the race-track, the more valuable it becomes and so the more its insured for. If that horse takes an injury, especially something that could traumatize that horse at future hurdles, corrupt vets will often tell the insurers that the horse is non-recoverable. Young fit race horses get a bullet through the head on a regular basis because they are worth more dead than alive.

Its not only horses. Racing greyhounds and whippets get the same lousy treatment. They are treated like kings until something goes wrong and after that its either death or a life of misery.

Thanks for that.