Through a FOIA request to the California Horse Racing Board, I have obtained the following information regarding racehorses killed at California tracks in 2019. Due to the volume, I will be posting incrementally.
unidentified 2-year-old, Aug 7, Los Alamitos T (euthanized Sep 7) – “laminitis [after] slab fracture [that was] held in place by a screw”
unidentified 3-year-old, Aug 14, Los Alamitos S – “severe, chronic (10 days) colitis; laminitis with sloughed hoof”
Always Checking, Aug 17, Los Alamitos R – “locked up during race, fell, could not rise – catastrophic fractures of [multiple] vertebrae, massive hemorrhage, significant compression of spinal cord”
unidentified 3-year-old, Aug 24, Los Alamitos T – “worked yesterday, walked on walker this morning, came off and dropped dead – rupture of stomach wall”
unidentified 4-year-old, Aug 29, Los Alamitos S – “post-surgical severe laminitis; pedal bone pushed through sole”
Da One Two Special, Sep 1, Los Alamitos R – “open, comminuted, displaced fracture of radius; extensive pieces of bone missing”; “gastric ulcers”
Free Ricky, Sep 7, Los Alamitos R (euthanized Sep 8) – “[multiple] fractures, complete rupture of suspensory apparatus”
I would assume the trainer knew about the laminitis before putting the horse on the track! The horse’s health and well being should be their top priority, I guess greed for money tops that, SAD!
How in the holy Hell does a horse have a catastrophic fracture of multiple vertebrae and significant compression of the spinal cord just from freakin’ running down a dirt track? Really?! Cause horses’ spines just blow apart all the time, right? This horse had a SERIOUS accident in the barn area or stall and was never checked or simply wasn’t worth anything to the trainer so was sent out to race anyway. I can’t (and don’t want) to imagine the terror and agony this poor horse felt when his back literally disintegrated while at breakneck speed.
A slab fracture held in place by a f***ing SCREW?!!!!!!
SEVERE COLITIS for 10 DAYS?!!!!! And a SLOUGHED HOOF?!!!!
You parasitic asswipes in the racing industry are disgusting, sadistic, psychopaths who deserve nothing less than to experience EVERY abuse and torture that EVERY single horse you claimed to “love like family” went through for not only the rest of this life but also the eternal next one.
Couldn’t have said it better, Rebecca!! Same well wishes a million times over for these parasitic excrements from me as well. To allow a 2 year old baby horse to suffer and agonize for a full f**n month or to claim that another one’s back just snapped, like that, out of the blue or another baby 3 year old just “dropped dead” when really he was just FINE the day of the “accident” is beyond monstrous!! I never imagined that a so called human being (beings, rather) could inflict sooo much suffering on innocent souls and GET AWAY WITH IT! I hope they all get wiped off… very, very soon
As a former owner/trainer I can say with 100% certainty that the majority of these horrific injuries were either pre-existing, chronic, and/or the owner/trainer knew about it.
So what does that translate to for those of you who are not horse people?
Well it means that these racehorses were in extreme pain, suffering, mental/emotional anguish every single day of their life and the “walking dead” for a long period of time.
These injuries, or at least the original injury, were not acute.
Some of these injuries are a result of the original injury like a never ending cycle of injuries that are never given the time required to heal while most, in any normal situation, would have necessitated immediate cessation of the physical/mental stress that results from training and racing.
Now can you imagine running with this pain while getting beaten to perform?
There’s no doubt in my mind that most of the racehorses on this list were, more or less, sent out to die.
Why were they sent out to die?
They were, most likely, a financial burden to the owner/trainers and it probably got to the point whereby the doping required to mask these issues, and to continue sending these racehorses out to flip a buck, exceeded the money that was coming in.
The choices were this 1. do the right thing and find them a home (which they know is near impossible today) 2. send them to a kill auction 3. send them out to die and eliminate the burden so they can go out and buy another to start the cycle all over again.
Choosing the 3 option can further be validated by their common excuse: “horses dying is an inherent risk”
This further solidifies the total absence of any type of investigation.
I realize that probably most of you find my claims of “sending them out to die” hard to believe, but I was around this business too long to know that this is a common scenario and know this – you are not dealing with “normal” people.
You are dealing with a bunch of deliberately delusional parasites who only care about sucking their host dry, dumping or killing them, and then going on to their next host.
Moreover, they have a plethora of pro-horse racing entities that exist to facilitate these scenarios and, even worse, is the fact that they operate with total impunity.
A pet snake has more legal protections than racehorses – no kidding!
Nevertheless, to those of us who are not morally bankrupt and actually possess some sort of compassion why in the world does this business still exist?
It should have been stopped shortly after the dinosaur era.
No, Gina… I believe 1000% that you are right! Clearly, you DO KNOW what you are talking about.
Yes, they do send them out to die but not before they let them suffer beyond belief. Horses should have the same rights as a family pet. And then… these monsters will disappear and/or get locked up. Even that would be too lenient for all the abuse, suffering, cruelty and crimes!!
The California Horse Racing Board sees these horses suffer in horrible, horrifying ways and does what? It appears that they do nothing to stop any horse from suffering the most excruciating and agonizing pain. It appears that they can sit on their hands and give the sadistic, barbaric, heartless heathens a green light to cause the most unacceptable injuries to beautiful horses and most of these horses are so young that they would not be ridden at all (or possibly very light riding, NEVER RACING) if they were owned by true horsemen and horsewomen. The CHRB has “earned” the right to be totally and completely ASHAMED of themselves because, they not only allow this horror show of abusing, torturing and killing horses to happen over and over, it appears that they also try to hide the evidence to the point that the general public would never know about these injuries. Without HORSERACING WRONGS and Patrick and all concerned and caring people involved and supporting HORSERACING WRONGS, we would not be seeing or reading this list of horses and their broken bones and other horrible injuries. Without the Freedom Of Information Act, most people would be unaware of these catastrophic injuries to these violently exploited horses that should never have even seen a racetrack, let alone run on one.