Bad to the Bone

The prevalence of spinal and pelvic malformations and exercise-induced skeletal injuries in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racehorses is coming to light as more of these horses are handed over to 'rehomers' after their racing careers. Many of these horses exhibit signs of pain and discomfort as people attempt to retrain them as riding horses, and often diagnostic imaging reveals issues with the spine and ribs. As these horses move on to being euthanised due to their incurable pain, dissections reveal that many have bony changes in their limb joints, spine, neck or pelvis. Damage to growth plates and incomplete ossification in mature horses is also prevalent. Most horses have several pathologies present.

But what strikes me as much as the damage caused directly by stresses placed on the bones of these immature horses, is the fact that many are born with abnormalities and dysfunction that will render them unsound no matter what life they lead or how well they are cared for.

Of all the things that weren't really a thing when I was in horses over 10 years ago but have since become a big deal, this strikes me as one of the biggest issues facing the horse industry going forward. Racing bodies gain woke points by banning the slaughter of ex racehorses and instead dumping truckload after truckload of what are essentially their waste product on the pleasure horse industry. Struggling rehomers and well-meaning riders are left to absorb the broken cast-offs of a capitalist nightmare using live animals to generate revenue through betting and allowing millionaire business owners to reduce their tax bills.

The following is a copy of the email submission I sent to brokenracehorsestories@gmail.com in support of a petition to implement soundness requirements for racehorses entering industry-sanctioned rehoming programs.

This is one horse's story...

My story is a little different, as my horse came straight from the stud as an unregistered yearling and never so much as spent a night in a stable.

1997 bay Thoroughbred filly by Kingston Rule (USA), out of What a Deal (by Full On Aces).

I got Red from the stud that bred her, as I was working there at the time. The mare owner was behind in paying his bills, and no paperwork had been submitted for the foal. The stud owner had a few non-payers that he was looking to get rid of, and I offered to take the unregistered filly.

I had her started at 3yo and she is to this day the single most talented horse I ever rode, with incredible movement and a real can-do attitude. She would buck sometimes, though, when asked to canter. I had a lot of trouble with her feet and she had a full lameness work-up when she was 5yo. Xrays showed rotation and degradation of her pedal bones. She was hot shod with inverted bar shoes on a five-week rotation for several months, but any time I tried to increase her workload she would end up lame again. In the end there was nothing else the farrier could do, and I decided to pull her shoes off and give her a long spell to see what happened.

She had a couple of foals, and her feet seemed greatly improved. She was never really lame in her feet again apart from the occasional abscess over the years.

A woman I knew offered to take her and see if she could get her going under saddle again. Everything went brilliantly for a while, they even got to the point of entering a dressage competition. Then out of the blue, Red bucked her rider off. The second time she did it while the rider was attempting to mount, and this time the rider was injured. We agreed that she probably shouldn't attempt to ride Red again, and Red came home. She was never ridden again, but sometimes I would be handling her or go to catch her and she would react like she had been stung. I talked vaguely of a 'pinched nerve' in her neck, but at the time ECVM was not on anyone's radar.

Red lived a long life as a much loved pet, grass eater and paddock companion. Where possible I handled her without a headcollar, and I could lead her from one paddock to another, trim her feet and put her rugs on and off without having to restrain her.

Having never lived the gut-damaging racehorse lifestyle, Red was a good doer who lived on grass with my ponies her whole life, even into her 20s when her teeth started falling out. But as she got older, she started showing classic signs of ECVM. By now I was aware of the findings coming to light from those performing independent racehorse dissections and the prevalence of spinal malformations in Thoroughbreds. The symptoms my beautiful big mare had been displaying her whole life were starting to make sense.

The attached photo shows Red on her last day. About half an hour later she was shot at home and her body taken away. As you can see, her body condition was still good for a 26yo horse with few remaining teeth, she had good muscle tone and looked to be in good health. But by this stage she was unable to lift her hind feet more than about an inch. She would stumble as she walked and her front feet would hover mid-stride as though they didn't quite know where the ground was. Her physical decline had been rapid, and I didn't want to risk her getting stuck in the dam or falling over one of the many branches in the paddock.

To me, Red's story demonstrates the contrast between how these horses are damaged by the rigors of racing, and how they are born broken by their breeding. While we can potentially improve outcomes for racehorses in their lives after racing by taking better care of their bodies during their racing careers, for many the dysfunction is there from the start and these horses never stand a chance.

We can work towards a world where immature horse skeletons are not overloaded and prevented from developing properly, and where gut health and stress management are prioritised for horses. But asking these industries to stop breeding from horses with a genetic legacy of crippling spinal malformation is going to be a much bigger fight.