Posted: Mar 17, 2018 2:30 pm
It was much easier when I had the moth avatar 
My last dog was also an ex racer. I looked him up online (there is a very good racing greyhound database; it does look, to all intents and purposes, as if the industry is trying to make dog owners/trainers more accountable and dogs traceable, but it falls apart on the practical side; I honestly believe it's mostly a PR exercise) and he was owned by a syndicate that had had over 2 500 dogs registered with them. 2 500 dogs, and that's just one, small, not very successful, syndicate in Ireland. Multiply that by all the owners/trainers out there, and you get some feel for the scale of the problem.
The horses (or dogs) that are successful certainly are worth a lot of money, and are extremely well looked after; the problem is that there are hundreds of youngsters bred, that don't make the grade, for every one that does, and once the animal has failed on the racetrack, they're worth virtually nothing. I don't think most owners/trainers are cruel in the sense of being physically abusive towards the animals, although of course that will happen, it's more that the industry has certain goals that are incompatible with the long term welfare of the majority of the animals they breed.
Racing greyhounds (much as I love them!) have been breed for thousands of years to do nothing but run; you really can't train them to do much else, although they make lovely pets and housedogs.
Ex racehorses take extremely long, patient retraining to become any good in any other sphere, and many are just too physically weakened after being worked so young, that they can't cope with the normal stresses of being ridden, even if you can get through to them mentally. And because they're so overbred, they can't just live out in a field with a rug (certainly not in winter in the UK), so rehoming them becomes very difficult; horses are bloody expensive things, and even the most ardent horse lover is going to find it hard to justify the expense of feeding and stabling a big horse they can't ride; even if you just need a companion horse, it's cheaper and easier to keep a native pony type, rather than a thoroughbred.
My last dog was also an ex racer. I looked him up online (there is a very good racing greyhound database; it does look, to all intents and purposes, as if the industry is trying to make dog owners/trainers more accountable and dogs traceable, but it falls apart on the practical side; I honestly believe it's mostly a PR exercise) and he was owned by a syndicate that had had over 2 500 dogs registered with them. 2 500 dogs, and that's just one, small, not very successful, syndicate in Ireland. Multiply that by all the owners/trainers out there, and you get some feel for the scale of the problem.
jamest wrote:
To be honest I'm unaware as to the extent of the ill-treatment of horses. It does strike me as odd though that an owner of a horse that is (or has the potential to be) worth many dollars (many millions thereof in some instances), would treat said horse with utter disdain. I don't know a lot about horses, but I know enough about humans to know that they will do their best to protect a valuable asset. So, I'm dubious as to the extent of this cruelty, though do not doubt that it ever happens.
The horses (or dogs) that are successful certainly are worth a lot of money, and are extremely well looked after; the problem is that there are hundreds of youngsters bred, that don't make the grade, for every one that does, and once the animal has failed on the racetrack, they're worth virtually nothing. I don't think most owners/trainers are cruel in the sense of being physically abusive towards the animals, although of course that will happen, it's more that the industry has certain goals that are incompatible with the long term welfare of the majority of the animals they breed.
Racing greyhounds (much as I love them!) have been breed for thousands of years to do nothing but run; you really can't train them to do much else, although they make lovely pets and housedogs.
Ex racehorses take extremely long, patient retraining to become any good in any other sphere, and many are just too physically weakened after being worked so young, that they can't cope with the normal stresses of being ridden, even if you can get through to them mentally. And because they're so overbred, they can't just live out in a field with a rug (certainly not in winter in the UK), so rehoming them becomes very difficult; horses are bloody expensive things, and even the most ardent horse lover is going to find it hard to justify the expense of feeding and stabling a big horse they can't ride; even if you just need a companion horse, it's cheaper and easier to keep a native pony type, rather than a thoroughbred.