Barbaro, book opening our eyes.
Jun. 28th, 2006 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sitaangelBarbaro, book opening our eyes
By Furman Bisher | Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 07:59 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It probably never occurred to you that if Barbaro had been running in a $25,000 claiming race when he went down on Preakness Day, he would have been euthanized on the track. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Barbaro was spared, at great expense, because of his future as a breeder. Let me assure you, though, that even some of the great ones aren’t spared, mercilessly destroyed by brutal owners who have no further use for them once their productive days are done.
This has weighed on my mind since a copy of “After the Finish Line” reached my desk awhile ago, months ago to be shamefully honest. Bill Heller, a writer for Thoroughbred Times, produced it, and I’ve dawdled about trying to decide when and how to get about it. I’ve bred and raced thorougbreds, but I only got close to one, named Middleburg Life, co-owned with Sam Huff of the NFL Huffs. This son of Academy Award won a few races before he came down injured a second time, and it was then that Sam and I agreed that we should find a good home for him, and we did, in a lady’s pasture in Virginia.
Exceller won on dirt and grass, he won on two continents. In the same race, the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park, he beat both Seattle Slew and Affirmed in 1978. Retired to stud, he bred several stakes winners, but was eventually sold to a man in Sweden. It is cruelly ironic that in the same year he was voted into the Hall of Fame at Saratoga, 1997, he was killed in a slaughterhouse in Sweden.
Once it became public knowledge, Exceller’s fate set off a wave of revulsion in this country, but it wasn’t enough to save the life of Ferdinand five years later. You remember Ferdinand. Won the Kentucky Derby in 1986, but when he didn’t produce in the barn, he was exported to Japan, and when he didn’t produce there, was slaughtered. A Kentucky Derby winner becomes dog meat!
It was nearly a year before the news broke in the United States, and a storm of outrage followed. But what kind of a dent did it make in this country? Not enough to halt the rate of slaughter, said to be about 50,000 a year. That includes all varieties, thoroughbreds, quarter horses, standardbreds, ponies, dray horses, just horses. But horse lovers of all sorts have been moved to action by the slaughter of classic champions.
Various and sundry individuals have sprung to the fore, some acting alone, some creating save-the-horse organizations. One was a sports writer from Boston who took early buy-out to pursue his mission in Kentucky. Michael Blowen’s organization is known as Old Friends, located on a farm near Midway, and has found help coming from all directions. One of his first “clients” was a filly by Exceller, sardonically named Narrow Escape. She had failed to get a bid at a major auction, and the auctioneer donated her to Old Friends.
These are just some of the cases Heller tells us about, most all referring to racing thoroughbreds. Not all the horses spared the slaughterhouse have the exciting background of one named Rich in Dallas. Rich in Dallas had portrayed Seabiscuit in the movie, but had soon slipped from view. Blowen found him running in $2,500 claiming races at Los Alamitos, the last step before the slaughterhouse, bought him and moved him to Midway, where he is enjoying pasture retirement.
There are several other organizations dedicated to the humane service of sparing the thoroughbred whose usefulness both on the track and in the breeding shed is over, Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation among others, but they can only skim off the top. Their rescue operation is mainly directed toward the racing horse, for there are people who feel a certain affection for these warriors, lowly as some may have been.
While there are cases of famous horses whose slaughter creates indignation, there are companies in Texas and Pennsylvania, cited in Heller’s book, that run horses through like cars at a car wash. “After the Finish Line” deals mainly with the racing thoroughbred and Heller’s repulsion at the slaughter. I can only scratch the surface here, but let me repeat what Bill Nack wrote after hearing of Ferdinand’s death: “Kentucky Derby winners are not meant to be part of a food chain.”
I can add to that, that no horse is.
By Furman Bisher | Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 07:59 PM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It probably never occurred to you that if Barbaro had been running in a $25,000 claiming race when he went down on Preakness Day, he would have been euthanized on the track. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Barbaro was spared, at great expense, because of his future as a breeder. Let me assure you, though, that even some of the great ones aren’t spared, mercilessly destroyed by brutal owners who have no further use for them once their productive days are done.
This has weighed on my mind since a copy of “After the Finish Line” reached my desk awhile ago, months ago to be shamefully honest. Bill Heller, a writer for Thoroughbred Times, produced it, and I’ve dawdled about trying to decide when and how to get about it. I’ve bred and raced thorougbreds, but I only got close to one, named Middleburg Life, co-owned with Sam Huff of the NFL Huffs. This son of Academy Award won a few races before he came down injured a second time, and it was then that Sam and I agreed that we should find a good home for him, and we did, in a lady’s pasture in Virginia.
Exceller won on dirt and grass, he won on two continents. In the same race, the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park, he beat both Seattle Slew and Affirmed in 1978. Retired to stud, he bred several stakes winners, but was eventually sold to a man in Sweden. It is cruelly ironic that in the same year he was voted into the Hall of Fame at Saratoga, 1997, he was killed in a slaughterhouse in Sweden.
Once it became public knowledge, Exceller’s fate set off a wave of revulsion in this country, but it wasn’t enough to save the life of Ferdinand five years later. You remember Ferdinand. Won the Kentucky Derby in 1986, but when he didn’t produce in the barn, he was exported to Japan, and when he didn’t produce there, was slaughtered. A Kentucky Derby winner becomes dog meat!
It was nearly a year before the news broke in the United States, and a storm of outrage followed. But what kind of a dent did it make in this country? Not enough to halt the rate of slaughter, said to be about 50,000 a year. That includes all varieties, thoroughbreds, quarter horses, standardbreds, ponies, dray horses, just horses. But horse lovers of all sorts have been moved to action by the slaughter of classic champions.
Various and sundry individuals have sprung to the fore, some acting alone, some creating save-the-horse organizations. One was a sports writer from Boston who took early buy-out to pursue his mission in Kentucky. Michael Blowen’s organization is known as Old Friends, located on a farm near Midway, and has found help coming from all directions. One of his first “clients” was a filly by Exceller, sardonically named Narrow Escape. She had failed to get a bid at a major auction, and the auctioneer donated her to Old Friends.
These are just some of the cases Heller tells us about, most all referring to racing thoroughbreds. Not all the horses spared the slaughterhouse have the exciting background of one named Rich in Dallas. Rich in Dallas had portrayed Seabiscuit in the movie, but had soon slipped from view. Blowen found him running in $2,500 claiming races at Los Alamitos, the last step before the slaughterhouse, bought him and moved him to Midway, where he is enjoying pasture retirement.
There are several other organizations dedicated to the humane service of sparing the thoroughbred whose usefulness both on the track and in the breeding shed is over, Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation among others, but they can only skim off the top. Their rescue operation is mainly directed toward the racing horse, for there are people who feel a certain affection for these warriors, lowly as some may have been.
While there are cases of famous horses whose slaughter creates indignation, there are companies in Texas and Pennsylvania, cited in Heller’s book, that run horses through like cars at a car wash. “After the Finish Line” deals mainly with the racing thoroughbred and Heller’s repulsion at the slaughter. I can only scratch the surface here, but let me repeat what Bill Nack wrote after hearing of Ferdinand’s death: “Kentucky Derby winners are not meant to be part of a food chain.”
I can add to that, that no horse is.
