PrintI have spent the last 24 hours speaking to multiple vets, lay-up farms, volunteers, stall managers and trainers about killing a famous racehorse. It is not the day I had picked out for myself.
A stakes winner and Preakness contender on three legs, with nobody to even spend the money on an X-ray to find out what the problem was, sat unknowing at the other end of my decision. Sometimes the weight of that can knock you flat down, sobbing into your pillow.
It is, as you can assume, as gut-wrenching a conversation as one could have—even for a horse I’ve never met, never laid eyes on, and had not owned for even 10 minutes. Truth be told, I find having these discussions even more disturbing with horses I’ve never met than with those I’ve known and loved. At least with the horses I have known, they’ve been treated with kindness, they’ve been fed carrots, and they’ve been loved. For some reason, this makes a decision a little bit easier.
We’ve had to euthanize lots of horses—when you rehabilitate injured racehorses in your spare time, it very sadly comes with the territory, as any group like mine can tell you. Catastrophic injuries, the odd colic and EPM cases are bound to happen when you take in more than 100 Thoroughbreds a year. As the owners and the people ultimately responsible for their happiness, sometimes you have to make those decisions.
The very worst though, are the cases where you are euthanizing a stunning, kind, forgiving, young animal because some combination of owner, vet and trainer decided to inject steroids into a joint to hide a small, manifesting problem rather than treating it, which allowed it to get worse. They make the active decision to ignore the warning signs of filling in a joint or “slight offness” and removing a small chip, or resting a minor fracture, and choose instead to mask the pain.
A small issue becomes a big, chronic one pretty darn fast when treated this way. The fact that people rely on the Thoroughbred stoicism to keep running and bringing home a paycheck makes me violent, as it would anybody who has loved a Thoroughbred. They will do what you ask of them, and they will do it despite the fact that they shouldn’t. It’s the famous Thoroughbred heart.
Just One More Race
Last year I got a call from a trainer who donates horses regularly to the program when they are non-competitive or come up with a little injury. He had a horse running in the claiming ranks who was bringing home a paycheck every time out—some days upwards of $20,000. The horse had come home from her last few races with some filling in an ankle, and it was discovered that she had arthritis forming in the joint. She was rested, injected with corticosteroids and run again. She brought home another paycheck.
This was the pivotal moment that separates the wheat from the chaff in the race world—this trainer called me and asked if we could take her, even though she was still running so well. The owner was pressuring him to inject the horse and run her again, and he knew that if he continued on this path, she would break down on the track or be used up so badly she would never have another career. She brought home nearly $10,000 with the simple injection—and no doubt she would bring home money each time they tapped (injected) and ran her.
