The Racing Industry has a lot to answer for
There is so much negative publicity of the Racing Industry and how cruel they are to horses, but in every given horse industry there is the balance. When you have cruel and un-engaging trainers you have the wonderfully kind engaged trainers. The balance is in every discipline and in every aspect of life. It is we as humans, who chose what it is that we wish to see, do we see the cruelty, do we see the good, or do we see and appreciate the balance.
I see many racehorses looking for re-homing who didn’t cut it in the racing industry. They either go to well-equipped homes, uneducated homes because someone is looking for a cheap horse or they get left in a paddock, badly mistreated or euthanized because they are misunderstood.
Yesterday, I was called to go and do bodywork on a horse and interestingly enough, it was another horse that demanded my attention. George. What a beautiful soul he was.
George 9 years old was at a dressage trainer’s property, he was to have some corrective training, a little bit more education as his owners wanted to sell him on, as he was quite a difficult horse to manage. He had gone from home to home and was a very misunderstood being. He was an amazing looking horse, big, strong, gracious movement and certainly had a presence about him, although he looked stressed and pissed off.
I watched the trainer gear him up and proceed to lunge him in the dressage arena. WOW, did George buck and rear and carry on. It was an amazing sight to see. George was very athletic indeed and needless to say, the trainer couldn’t do much with George and George was totally disinterested in anything he had to say and had a “F%$K YOU” attitude.
I asked the trainer what George’s issue was “George is up for sale, his owner wants him ridden to get the buck out of him and get him more disciplined, however, George has a lot of issues, he has digestive issues, has ulcers and a whole gamete of other issues and he has rather a shitty attitude. He is quite a dangerous horse under saddle. I am going to get the owner to get him vet checked and treated for ulcers etc and see if that can make a difference because he is certainly not listening to anything anyone has to say.”
My heart went out to George, as all I could see “in my perception” was a person who saw George’s behavior as bad and sought to find a punishment, rather than a horse that was misunderstood and needed a solution found for his issues; George bucked and he bucked well and the trainer certainly wasn’t interested in hopping on for fear of endangering himself, which after watching Georges display, I wouldn’t either, but mindless lunging is also not the answer.
After the trainer had finished with George, I went and spent some time with George, hung out with him in his paddock and asked him what was going on for him?
“George was an ex-racehorse, George’s whole being, his whole life revolved around racing, it was what he loved, it was what he was born to do, it was in his blood. George hated Dressage, he hated the mindless training, he hated going around in tight circles his body couldn’t do, he felt it was completely mind-numbingly boring and didn’t want to do it. He also didn’t like the food he was getting, it was hard and uninteresting and it made his stomach hurt. He loved what he was being fed whilst he was racing, oats and corn and a wonderful array of hay and other goodies that he could eat. George now only got pellets, no chaff, no hay, just pellets; and before any judgment is made, I see this a lot. The horse world has become so lazy in the feeding of horses and that relies on pelleted food to feed a horse that needs to be fed real food and a variety of different things. It is now common practice that horses are just fed pellets.
George wanted to be a racehorse, it was all he could think about, he loved the race, he loved the excitement of the crowd, he loved the racing of his mates and he loved the galloping on the beach and the swimming in the ocean. He loved his trainer, he loved it all. He desperately wanted to go back into racing. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t do what it was that he loved and why he was ousted out of the racing industry. He was a little kid, chucking a tantrum because he couldn’t get what he wanted. He was born to race, it was in his blood and it was all he knew and all he wanted.
Just as a human sees a one-sided world, a false reality, so did George. He was so locked in on only seeing the good about the industry; he never saw the downfall.
I told him from a human perspective all the downsides to the racing industry. I listed as many I could and as I did so and I could see a slight shift in his demeanor and he too could recognize that it wasn’t all he thought it was. Sometimes it is just a matter of cracking the fantasy of how something is perceived as opposed to how it truly is and we talked about how his new life was serving his purpose and how those tight circles were in effect making him more flexible so he could do a longer stride. I told him his new owner loved him, but he was making it impossible for her to work with him and the only option she felt was to move him on.
I won’t see George again, I believe his owner was coming to pick him up that afternoon. Hopefully, some of what I told George sunk in and the owner will see a shift in him and he has a change in attitude. Who knows, but I hope for the sake of George, there was some change or the inevitable will happen if there is no change.
On the flip side, the racing industry has a lot to answer for, when an industry is about the win, about the money, too many horses that give it all they have for the love of the race but just aren’t cutting the grade, are ousted out of the system and sometimes into homes that don’t understand the beauty and wonderment of the Thoroughbred Horse.
There are two sides to the industry and the horse is the one that suffers, not all ex-racehorses are suited for the dressage industry and need to go into an industry that they get to run, and serve a true purpose for their highest good. On the other hand, some ex-racehorses love dressage, as it is completely different to the lifestyle of the racing industry.
Is there any answer to any of it? I don’t know. I do know for me it is about helping the horse understand their life, at this moment in time without any judgment on an industry, I know, I can not change today. I am just making the change in the only way I know how too and that is being a voice for the horse.
