Horses do the damnedest things

When I was a kid, I leased a big lunk of a palomino named Dandy. He had a lovely broad white blaze, and one summer day when I brought him in from the pasture, I was horrified to see a bloody scratch all the way across his face. The barn owner gave me some pink goo to treat it, and it worked like a charm, but I'll never forget what she told me that day---that a horse can and will find the only nail in a hundred miles of fence and scratch himself on it. In other words, horses are fragile animals, and freak accidents can and do occur.

Yesterday, unfortunately, was one of those days. In California, the high-class turf mare Nashoba's Key, who won 7 straight races last year, had to be euthanized early yesterday morning after kicking the wall of her pen at Hollywood Park and breaking one of her hind legs. On the other side of the country, super-pony Theordore O' Connor, a 14.1 Shetland/Arab/Thoroughbred cross who competed at the highest levels in three day-eventing and who had recently been short-listed for the USET Olympic team, spooked and fell on his owners' farm in Virginia, lacerating a hind leg beyond repair.

For me, this just drives home a point that I have made to non-racing people after widely publicized break downs. Yes, there is abuse and negligence and doping in racing, just like in any equine sport, but accidents DO happen. Horses take bad steps, slip, crash into trees, get tangled in fences, spook, etc. It's freakish and it's sad but it's an unavoidable part of being involved with these animals. Some of these accidents may be preventable, but some are just that, accidents.

And that leads me back to racing and what is being done to prevent or at least reduce the number of accidents on the track. Both ESPN and NBC broadcast round table discussions with industry experts during their Preakness coverage two weeks ago, and a number of ideas were tossed out---a steroid ban, a re-evaluation of racing surfaces, greater regulation of toe-grabs, etc. The only definitive change in the offing so far is a complete ban on steroids. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but apparantly even Congress is getting involved... I hope that the racing industry will push through this change and others to make the sport safer and not just revert back to the status quo now that the heat is mostly off. I'll be curious to see what, if any, discussion there is of this subject on the Belmont telecast.

Tomorrow, I'll be delving into the issue of breeding for soundness, or rather, the lack there-of. I was quite annoyed to see that idea poo-pooed by the round table pundits and one vet in particular during the Preakness coverage. I think they're dead wrong to assume that 30 years is too short a time to change the durability of the breed.