Vic
Elite Member
- Jun 12, 2001
- 50,422
- 14,337
- 136
I don't know too much about this but I saw some documentary on this recently that they can only fix minor leg breaks for horses, and even that requires extremely expensive surgery (they had video on this, horse on operating table = :Q ).
Major leg break still = death to horse.
Major leg break still = death to horse.
sad... just cuz the horse can't race, they have to kill it... and they didn't even make it sound nice, they just said that they destroyed the horse... wtf?
man, it's gonna end up in some dog food or chinese restaurant or something now (i'm chinese so it's ok if i say it
)
man, it's gonna end up in some dog food or chinese restaurant or something now (i'm chinese so it's ok if i say it
)It's more a financial equation. Surgery and recovery cost big bucks, but the value of the horse afterwards is low because it's pretty useless. This means that financially speaking the best thing to do is to kill the horse and sell the corps.
Maybe they didn't want to set a precedent.
Race horses all over would start busting legs right and left!!
Because horses have such relatively fragile legs, they don't heal well at all. Even people who love horses (and aren't being cruel) put them down if they break their legs. It's not cruelty, it's not wanting to horse to have a weak leg that will be much more pron to breaking once it breaks. They'd never be able to run on it as they used to without breaking it again. Look at the picture; look how much of a horses body weight is bearing down on those spindly little legs; lot of pressue on those things.
Whether or not horses should even be used as race horses is a whole different story.
rofl. They could just sit around all day have mares brought into them. The racing industry would takn overnight.
Any horse that breaks a leg is not brought back to full health. The horse that breaks its leg is destroyed every single time because it is not financially agreeable to nurse the horse back to health.
That's why I never go to the races or support horse racing.
nik
Amused
Elite Member
- Apr 14, 2001
- 57,147
- 18,699
- 146
That's just not true, Nik. And this is to Fettsbabe, too:
-----------------------
Broken legs can't be easily fixed
...Why do they still shoot horses in 2002 with all the advances that have occurred in modern medicine?
Certainly some fractures are repairable, using modern developments such as bone plates and bone screws. But many are not. The explanation is complex and relates to unique aspects of the horse.
The principles of bone or fracture repair are the same across all species. In repairing a broken bone, the broken pieces need to be stabilised, held together, a healthy blood supply is needed and any infection needs to be controlled.
If this is achieved, then the break can heal and the bone will repair and regain its structural strength. In the past, a "plaster cast" was used to stabilise the break and more recently metal plates, pins and screws have been used.
These implants can restore strength to the broken bone and allow horses to move about and, to some degree, use a broken limb during the healing process.
In most circumstances, a broken bone will heal and regain its strength in 12-16 weeks, but other variables such as infection or movement can slow or delay healing.
In human surgery, the stability of the repaired fracture can be helped by keeping the patient confined to a bed and non-weight bearing during the 12-16 weeks' healing period.
This is vital as uncontrolled weight bearing and movement to a fracture, before it has healed, can delay recovery and prevent a bone from healing.
This is one area where equine surgery is unique. Horses are big animals that do not tolerate long anaesthetic periods. They have an absolute requirement to be able to stand on all four legs.
This means, in practical terms, the surgery or operating time should not exceed three to four hours and that immediately after surgery, the horse must wake up from the anaesthetic and be able to use the repaired broken leg to stand and walk.
This requirement puts extraordinary demands on the repair and the implants and all equine surgeons have experienced the frustration and disappointment when, after hours of intricate surgery, the horse smashes its broken leg again and bends the metal implants when struggling to stand after the anaesthetic.
To try to prevent this, strong fibreglass casts are often used to help horses waking up from an anaesthetic. Nonetheless, everyone breathes a sigh of relief when it stands, as one hurdle has been passed.
A good blood supply to the broken bones is as important as stability and controlling infection in healing a broken leg. This blood supply comes from the actual feeder to the broken bone and is supplemented by the supply to surrounding tissues, such as skin and muscle.
This is another area where the horse is unique. Below the knee or hock, the leg is composed of bone, ligament and skin. Thus the blood supply to this area is already marginal as there are no muscles and therefore no associated supply.
This lack of an adequate blood supply is important as in some severe broken legs that occur during a gallop, that supply is also damaged beyond repair, which means even with metal implants and surgical repairs to the bone, it will still not heal.
That is why some high-speed catastrophic fractures in a galloping horse still cannot be repaired.
-------------------
In other words, most attempts at healing bad fractures would kill the horse anyhow. It's more humane to put them down.
Was it animal cruelty to destroy that horse? Obviously not. The fracture, by any measure, was too severe and never would have healed.
Was it cruel to put the horse in a situation that caused such a fracture? That's a matter of opinion.
MichaelD
Lifer
- Jan 16, 2001
- 31,528
- 3
- 76
How/Why do you think that horse was raised in the first place? All modern-day racehorses are born from in-vitro fertilzation. It's all very scientific. Somebody paid a LOT of money for some sperm and an egg, implanted it, then raised that horse to run fast and do nothing but run fast until the day it died.
Modern-day racehorses are continually injected with performance-enhancing steroids as a matter of course. This is illegal, but everyone does it. The horse-racing industry is so crooked it makes Microsoft look like a non-profit church organization. :Q
The horses are investments...assets...the day they lose a race, they're dogmeat anyway.
Not saying it's RIGHT, just saying it's the TRUTH.
Demon-Xanth
Lifer
- Feb 15, 2000
- 20,551
- 2
- 81
I've worked around horses and I cannot disagree with putting a horse down after a broken leg. If your kid breaks his leg you can easily explain to them "keep weight off of it" and they understand that the cast is going to be a good thing. With a horse you must effectively put them in traction for an extended period of time, this freaks the horse out something fierce when you do this, and they'll try and kick off that thing hanging onto thier leg (the cast). IF (and that's a big if too), the horse does let it heal, the horse will never be able to perform, even in reletively mild trail environments, and the trauma from going through the treatment will leave them alot more skittish and likely to cause problems than they were before.
wtf?what do you means its okay because your chinese .so if im black i can say great person?man the ignorance of some people in this modern day societyOriginally posted by: slikmunks
sad... just cuz the horse can't race, they have to kill it... and they didn't even make it sound nice, they just said that they destroyed the horse... wtf?
man, it's gonna end up in some dog food or chinese restaurant or something now (i'm chinese so it's ok if i say it
Yeah, cause it'd be better to let a functionally crippled horse hobble around in constant pain for the rest of its life. Much more humane.
So all the black people( and it's a lot) that say great person are ignorant?
all the blacks that say yo my great person, That's my great person, things like that, cause I hear that all the time at the malls.
Keep in mind that these are EXTREMELY high-strung thoroughbred horses. They would not be good around children.
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