Through a FOIA request to the California Horse Racing Board, I have obtained the following details on some of that state’s kills in 2025 (previous ones here).
(Note: The final batch of necropsies from 2025 are coming in at a snail’s pace. In my most recent request – for the remaining 13 – the Board sent just the one below.)
Valtari, Mar 18, Santa Anita S
“Horse was fine evening Mar 17; found dead in stall 4 am Mar 18. Cause of death: hypovolemic shock due to abdominal aortic rupture and hemoabdomen. Other findings include several black nodules suggestive of melanoma, and bilateral laminitis.”
At the time of his death, Valtari was 14 and being used as a “pony” at the track. That poor, long-abused, long-suffering boy. How terrified he must have been on his final night. Dying horrifically – “aortic rupture,” “bilateral laminitis,” etc. – and all alone. Bastards.
Have you all read the latest info? Mr. Baffert is to be on the board of HISA! As a commenter on a Racing publication said several years ago, “HISA is missa”! Can`t think of anyone worse to be on an overseeing board for integrity or medication in the racing business. Of course racing has NO integrity or honesty! We found that out the hard way in 2004.The horses were & are honest, the people not so much. Those that are honest get out of racing as we have seen time & again.
The truth about horse racing is that race tracks are death camps for horses. Brutal treatment, 23 hours of confinement in a stall oftentimes with both panels of the stall doors shut so that the horse can’t even look out of his/her stall at what is going on outside of the shedrow. Bored horses can’t look at another horse, just 4 walls and a hay rack, oftentimes empty, no water in the water pails. Babies dying in the stalls of horrific internal injuries caused by trainers or their crews using gut kicks on them. Drugging them with massive doses of poisons, grooms that are imported from impoverished nations and have no qualifications or experience with horses. They are cheap and exploitable labor. Horse racing is not the only legalized killing grounds for horses…riding academies, the Olympics, rodeos, carriage horses, heritage horses, all breeds of horses are not protected by law as they should be. However, horse racing is one of the worst offenders, the evidence is mountain high of videos, autopsy findings, negligence of horse transport companies that are not legally required to have defibrillators and fire extinguishers on horse transports, and the state of Kentucky is monstrously offensive by ignoring the crimes done to mares, studs, foals. Removing babies from their dams at 4 months of age, using mares as nurse mares and killing their get so they can be used as a nurse mare for foals whose Moms will be returned to the breeding shed so they can get another foal out of her with money hungry speed. How do the citizenry of Kentucky calm their conscience?” How do they do that? How do they blind their hearts to the sufferings of such beautiful creatures, Oh, it must be they drink tons of that other money maker – Kentucky gut rot otherwise known as Blue Grass Bourbon.
It should be mandated that trainers have someone with their horses at ALL TIMES . Violations should be strictly enforced and carry very strict penalties including revocation of licenses. Of course the ultimate solution is to close down this horrible industry, but in the meantime we should demand that horses receive the best of care. I’m going to be more proactive in making the public more aware of what this “sport” is all about.
I can only speculate that someone kicked the horse in the gut, or something equally brutal, to eliminate the expense of treating his cancer and his laminitis. Of course, I can’t prove my suspicions but this type of internal injury, abdominal aortic rupture, is considered rare and a horse with laminitis and cancer is only going to mean a huge financial burden for people who are only interested in profiting from the exploitation of horses; profiting because “they love their horses so much” as you may have heard and read countless times.
I find these overnight stall deaths very very disturbing. If you have animals in your ward, take care of them. It just is a travesty to know simple preventative measures are overlooked. Disgusting.
Frankly, I can’t imagine a horse that is not being forced to gallop hard every morning would have such a horrific health abnormality as a rupture of anything inside of his body. Sometimes you will find a cat that is dead but there are no external injuries. This one time in particular, a neighbor had a young cat that appeared to be perfectly healthy and yet was found dead in the front yard of the house two doors over. She took the deceased cat to the veterinarian to be necropsied. It turned out that the cat had a ruptured liver and had died of internal bleeding. The most logical conclusion was that the cat had been hit by a motor vehicle.
How can it be possible for a horse to have ruptured internal organs when supposedly being “fine” in his stall one night and suddenly being found dead in his stall the next morning?
Maybe our “horse-loving” friend, Jason, can come up with an explanation such as, for example, the horse was loved to death???