RACING AND PACING

There are just a few things which upset me about racing in general, the worst of which is the racing of two year olds.

We all seem to take it for granted that racing horses is a huge industry entered into by no less than the Royal Family, so it must be okay. Well for me, the racing of a two year old with a rider on it's back is just outright cruelty. The horses skeleton, muscles and brain are still youngsters, no wonder the jockey has to be small but even then they're sitting on two year olds for heavens sake! Most horses bodies don't fully stop developing until they're four or older. That's why most horses (except racehorses) aren't started in the saddle until they're four.

Racehorses are the leaders in 'stable vices' as they tend to be holed up in stables for most of the day with one or two burst of freedom when training. They usually have hard feed and hay and not the cool fresh grass that adorns the driveways of some of these establishments. They get bored very quickly and the youngsters have to make the grade quickly and with enthusiasm. Any horse that doesn't do so is usually dropped pretty quickly, sold on or knackers yard. There is usually a grim end for a racehorse that does not have continual success.

Thanks to caring welfare communities around the country some racehorses have been given the chance to live. These committed group spend months, sometimes years retraining these beauties for other disciplines and not to just run as fast as they can. Most of these horses don't know about cornering in arenas, have only two speeds (walk and flat out), and just teaching the basics means going right back to the beginning. Without these dedicated people most of these horses would be dog food and none of it their fault. With most things involving humans and money (in the form of betting) the animals come out worst. It's all about money!

The next point I want to make is the use of whips. If these horses want to run so much why do they have to be whipped at all. If none of the jockeys were allowed to whip their horses the race would be won by the true athlete. I think we should all think deeply on our own use of the whip too. IT ISN'T NECESSARY.

A quick word about pacing too.For those who don't know what this discipline is, the pacer is a horse who is driven from a small exercise cart called a 'sulky'. The pacer is made to trot with both front and rear legs of the same side moving together. Usually a horses legs move diagonally. Man realised that to move the legs on the same side together makes a horse slightly faster, and I'm afraid to say that most horses do not do this naturally, they are trained and even in the races the drivers fit a piece of harness around the legs of one side so that it's impossible to move any other way. If that's not cruel I don't know what is!

I'm not trying to shock anyone with these facts but I really haven't gone into some of the really bad things that do go on. I just want everyone to open their eyes and try to eliminate the basic nastiness in the horse world, the way they live, they way they're trained, the way we use them and the way we generally use them for just our own purposes without any care for their horse's well-being.