This from The Daily Gazette yesterday:
“Less than two hours before Arcangelo won the Travers, New York Thunder was euthanized behind the dreaded blue screen, right in front of the clubhouse patrons. When he broke down, parents shielded their kids from the sight of the aftermath.”
To all those who “shielded their kids” from Saturday’s horrors: If you are still not convinced, if you still have every intention of return trips to Saratoga (or any track), then you are unfit parents. Full stop.
Here is how one of those two kills looked, courtesy of PETA:
This made me cry. Just horrific.
I was going to write exactly the same thing.
This is an example of the utter and complete disconnect in human society in general about the rights of animals. I’m not surprised at all to hear that the parents shielded their children and maybe continued to watch more races.
Hopefully, one day when these children grow up, they will listen to their consciences and choose TO NOT BE A PART OF this morally depraved massacre of innocent horses at the racetracks for the so-called “family fun and entertainment” or the Pari-mutuel wagering.
At our weekly protest at the Del Mar race track, I am always surprised at how many people bring children into that most unsavory environment of drugs,alcohol,gambling and animal abuse. Often I see parents shielding their children’s eyes from our posters and signs. They don’t want the children to see a picture of a horse on the ground, but they continue past our protest to take the kids to the races where they may very well see a horse go down in real time. Parenting at its finest……
Bingo, Jane. I’d like to think these same parents just don’t know what they’re getting their children in to. Even if there isn’t a horror-show breakdown on the card, their kids are seeing animals HIT WITH STICKS — and they’re surrounded by “adults” cheering this violent behavior on. Add to that the celebration of degeneracy, brutality, alcoholism, eating disorders and the omnipresent cacophony of grumpy old dudes complaining, and this “fun family adventure” won’t earn their folks any Parent-of-the-Year awards.
The crowd didn’t appear too distraught from the video. Perhaps they are so accustomed to the carnage they’ve become indifferent. Then again, most bettors don’t really care to begin with. The horses are just numbers on their ticket and New York Thunder messed up some winning tickets for them. You can blame the industry but without gamblers to feed the killing machine racing would end tomorrow. Unfortunately, breeding these broken creatures will continue whether racing does or not. I find that extremely tragic.
If all racing in the USA stopped tomorrow, or a year from now, the bottom would fall out of the market for new Thoroughbred foals. When the bottom falls out of the market for a specific type or breed of horse or pony, there is no profit in producing more. (The same is true of anything else that is produced.)
Only the people who are somehow prepared for a complete crash in the demand for more new Thoroughbred foals in the USA, Canada and Puerto Rico would be able to continue breeding and producing more new Thoroughbred foals.
If there was no demand for their new foals for racing here in the USA, Canada and Puerto Rico, they could be sold to foreign markets as you say. It would have to be the very rich people who could sustain such an operation if they were producing Thoroughbreds for racing in foreign countries. Keep in mind that Thoroughbreds have been and are being sold to foreign markets, such as Korea, for one, now. We don’t get the numbers of horses exported to countries such as Japan and Korea reported here. The life cycle of a Korean Thoroughbred racehorse ends in death at the slaughterhouse. That’s the culture of that country.
(There are PETA videos that show how the Korean racing industry transports one racehorse at a time to their slaughterhouse which is a relatively short distance away from the racetrack where the horse was injured badly enough that he/she can’t be raced anymore.)
When the bottom falls out of the market for Thoroughbred racehorses, the breed will be listed eventually on the website of “endangered domestic breeds of livestock” that are in danger of becoming extinct. There are certain breeds and types of horses that are on the list of endangered livestock breeds already. There are different categories; one category is “Critical” and you can see for yourself what the numbers of existing live animals are for being listed on the critical list
Today is August 30th. This haunts me every day. I wake up thinking about New York Thunder, think of him during the day and am thinking of him when I go to bed. I live near Tampa Florida and we just experienced Hurricane Idalia … I have been here for 60 years and hurricanes are always a bit terrifying but even this didn’t stop me from thinking of New York Thunder … nor was it even close to how horrific what happened to him and so many more is.