Jezebel going down in the 4th at Evangeline last night. The full chart note said, “Jezebel was hard to load, fell and was transported off the track via an equine ambulance.” Wonder if the “hard to load” was the 5-year-old mare’s way of saying, “something’s not right.” The ethically-stunted announcer, by the way, called it a “spill.”
There are no words for this break down, sad that this happens more often then not. I know there are BAD people but there are good people out there we.
What infuriates us to this day as how the so called horse people NEVER listen to the horses! Horses will tell you if something is not right if you take the time to listen. We could see that Jezebel was not traveling well several strides before she broke down. Sad, sad, she should have lived another 20 years at least. We have mares that are 24 & still can gallop in our field with their herd.
These so-called horsemen obviously never read a book about working with horses to teach them to respond to cues and allow the horse to enjoy the relationship with their human handlers. If they ever did, they dismissed it due to having no scruples. The only way a person could think it’s okay to force a horse to load into a starting gate would be to have absolutely no compassion for the horse and therefore be overcome with moral depravity.
This industry forces a horse to go against what is right for the horse which automatically comes under the category of abuse of the horse and neglect of what the horse needs on many levels.