The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has disclosed the death of Bodemeister Wind in the 3rd race at Churchill June 12: “comminuted slab fracture of the third carpal bone, with fractures of the distal aspect of the radial and ulnar carpal bones; euthanized due to the severity of his injury and a poor prognosis.” Bodemeister was three years old; ’twas his sixth time under the whip.
This is horseracing.
Patrick, I know you use the term of “under the WHIP” and say the number of times the horse has been UNDER THE WHIP as a euphemism to mean that the horse has/had been in a race. But, the fact remains that most likely every single horse has been whipped most of his or her life whether the colt, filly, gelding, stallion or mare was raced or not. The horses are whipped in the so-called training phases of their lives and in their stalls. Racehorses are not even safe in their stalls from egregious ABUSE! (Case in point: Amber Cobb).
Wanda, some of us who teach horses to be ridden have NEVER used a whip to teach a horse to go forward or to gallop for the 1st time. We have been handling horses for 40+ years & have never used a whip teaching a horse to be ridden . Notice we use the word teaching not training or to us the abhorrent term :” breaking” .We have taught many breeds of horses to be ridden besides thoroughbreds, Arabians., Belgians , Percheron, & even BLM horses of the range. The BLM horses were among the most difficult to gain their trust enough to teach them to be ridden.Glad to see Patrick noting the small western 3 & 4 day race meets abject cruelty. Those kinds of meets were only to well familiar with as that`s where we started riding thoroughbreds almost 40 years ago. Will be happy to see the day when those crummy meets are GONE.
When I said every single horse, I was referring to race horses more than any other breed or type. I know there are some decent people that don’t abuse their horses with whips and ropes. In the early 1960s, we had a neighbor that had some nice looking young horses. One day I saw him take a rope and just WHIP the poor horses over the rump, one more so than the other horses. The horses were huddled together in a corner of the corral with no where to go. We lived on/near a residential street and he lived about one house down on the opposite side of the road. I was shocked and appalled, but being a grade school age young person, I felt powerless to stop him from abusing the horses. I was horrified!!! It didn’t look like he had enough brains to know how to teach the horses anything.
What a terrible thing to see as a grade school student. Fortunately we did not see any of that cruelty until our late teens & early 20`s when we could then make decisions about what we could do.We chose to turn people like that in & leave the racing industry altogether in 2005.Of course the racing office & management of the track did nothing.
Wanda, re: Whipping and abuse, well, my opinion is that so many, if not the majority, of people who ride are cruel. Jumping is cruel, racing is cruel, barrel racing is cruel. Rodeos are cruel, “breaking” a horse is cruel. Using a carriage horse is cruel. Using a horse in police work is cruel. Competitions are wrong. Horses deserve their own lives. They do not exist to please us. They don’t even NEED us other than as basic caretakers. Humans are beyond selfish. Taking wild horses of their lands is cruel. Slaughter is cruel, breeding is cruel (we don’t need to breed more horses). Keeping in a single stable for hours and hours is cruel. For that matter, bits are cruel! I never cared for a horse but I am a human being and would never even ride a horse, let alone do those things. So, imagine how I feel about racing! No no no no no!!
The abuse and killing of racehorses needs to stop!
We gotta love Kentucky’s recent efforts at TRANSPARENCY, don’t we? They’re finally acknowledging a few of their many, more obvious racehorse kills to the public, but it always takes months for them to admit each one. Can’t believe they only suppressed the death of poor Bodemeister Wind for seven weeks or so; seems like it’s been upwards of 12 weeks for each of their handful of other death admissions.
Way to speed things up, Kentucky Racing Commissioners!
Bodemeister Wind was owned by Maggi Moss. On May 30, he finished 6th of 7 in a 40K claiming race – 13 days later Moss/Amoss dropped him in for 20K (he was claimed but it was voided). That (final) race is available on YouTube and it’s heartbreaking to watch him hobble across the finish line. And since (jockey) James Graham didn’t pull him up but kept riding him, making Bodemeister Wind finish the race on a broken knee, the colt’s people (Moss, Amoss and Graham) got to share the $560 he died for.
Six weeks later, another racehorse finished his race lame and needed vanning off – 7 y/o Candy Carlos, a gelding in his 57’th start at Delaware Park. Per Don Chatlos; “[Candy Carlos] was dead lame pulling up and what does this idiot (jockey) Raul Mena do? Stays on the horse for a good 1/8th of a mile until the outrider gets to him.” (of note, Candy Carlos was also a DNF on December 8 and in the last 9 months has been claimed 4 times).
Bodemeister Wind and Candy Carlos both endured additional pain and trauma because their jockeys chose NOT to bring them to a halt and dismount. Another thing these two shared was their racing owner – Candy Carlos was once owned by Maggi Moss. In fact, Karl Broberg claimed Candy Carlos from Moss in October and what I find odd is that the “caring” Moss didn’t claim her gelding back from Broberg…given the fact she makes it known horses are “lucky” to get claimed AWAY from him. Oh those two did a little back and forth on Twitter – some pot calling the kettle black.
Thank you, Joy. There’s so, so many creeps in this sick game. All these dudes who shrug off all the carnage and criminal cruelty to horses. But it’s the women who puzzle me the most. Especially the ones, like Moss, who put up a front of sincerity about equine welfare in racing, feign compassion for all the dumped and destroyed animals their industry generates, then GET CAUGHT REPEATEDLY DOING EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS in their own barns. It’s like a race to the bottom of the Claim-Dump-Kill game. Gross.
We must end the racing of horses at once!
Stop slaughtering horses now