Musings

Well, greed, stupidity and an unwillingness to admit to a problem has killed another beautiful animal. Thank god, I didn’t actually watch the Derby on Saturday. Instead I was happily watching IRON MAN (more about that in another post). It wasn’t until Sunday morning that I heard the news about Eight Bells, and the ended up seeing her collapse on Monday morning. I had been trying to avoid it, but they snuck it in on me.

Okay, time for a rant. The problem is that the thoroughbred is a hideously in-bred creature who can no longer withstand the task for which they have been created. They have gone the way of the German Shepherd. The stud book was pretty much fixed back in the 18th century after the admixture of Arabian blood into the English and Irish sport horses. What is desperately needed is an infusion of new blood into the line. They need to pick some terrifically fast Arab stallion from Dubai or Saudi Arabia, and pick some superb Olympic jumper (a German or Dutch sporthorse stallion), and allow them to be bred to thoroughbred mares.

There are farms where a great racing stallion is being bred back to his granddaughters. It’s never a good thing, and certainly not when you’ve been doing it for two centuries.

Then there is the issue of American greed. These horses are broke and start running at two years of age, and are expected to run in world class races when they are barely three years old. This is like asking a seven year old human to run a marathon. These horses are babies. My Vento has just turn six, and Christine Traurig (who rode in the Olympics) calls him “the baby”. If we waited to run these horses until they were at least four years of age they would hold up better. It still wouldn’t undo the damage of generations of inbreeding, but it would help.

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a jockey. (Everyone told me I couldn’t because girls couldn’t be jockeys. That’s the subject for another rant, at another time.) I watched racing, I got to breeze a racehorse, I loved it. Now I won’t watch a televised race or go to a track because I’m pretty sure that sometime during that day a horse is going to breakdown and have to be euthanized. It’s like I’m being stabbed every time I have to see that, and it brings back all the awful memories of the night Steppi died.

People need to start demanding change or this situation is just going to continue to get worse. I’m not a PETA nut, but this has become abuse.

So, I’m off to Las Vegas this evening to visit Carl, and get a tour of the MGM City Center construction site. This is the largest privately funded construction project in the Western hemisphere. I don’t gamble, and the sight of all those people shuffling down the strip, clutching their beer bottles, and searching for the big win, I found to be unbelievably depressing. Sort of a zombie apocalypse lit by neon. We’re going to try and see Ka and that’s exciting. I’ve only seen the Cirque de Soliel on television.

I’m looking forward to a trip that has nothing to do with writing, but I also hate to leave my horse. I spent a long time just standing in the stall, resting my head against him, and stroking and scratching him. He had his eyes half-closed, and his upper lip was quivering because it felt so good to have me getting to the itchy places. Occasionally he’d swing his head around, and press his forehead against my upper arm. He is the best horse in the world. (But then I’m biased.)