As Big Brown trains for his third triple crown race of the year, he has his eyes set on the prize. The prize is winning the Belmont Stakes and being the first horse in 30 years to take the Triple Crown. Unfortunately, Big Brown has been having some trouble lately. He has what is known as a quartercrack in his left front hoof. A quartercrack is the broken nail of horse racing, but it can be detrimental to the speed of and pain caused to the horse. As he was stitched up with metal wire, Big Brown was sent back to the training arena to prep for this final race, but this injury (and the fact that it happened twice in the previous year) brought light to a topic often questioned within the horse racing circle.
The question asked is whether breeders are poorly breeding the horses so that they are more genetically prone to quartercracks and broken legs, even if it is by accident. Over the years, race horses have evolved within themselves to the race horses of today. These horses are basically muscle with not a lot of bone. Most of their body is the muscle, hence being able to run at outrageous speeds that would win a race by 5 1/4 lengths like Big Brown did at the Preakness 2008 race. Since there are less bones in the horse, this increases the chance for injury. Should this be looked into?
Animal rights activists have been on horse racing's case ever since it was made popular. If animal cruelty is defined as anything that causes stress or pain to the animal in question, then horse racing is 100% animal cruelty. Beating a horse with a whip (technical term? I don't know) in order to make him run faster does not seem fair to the animal. And imagine if Big Brown loses the Belmont this year. What then? Will the trainer give him unconditional positive regard, or will he punished for his lack of effort? My money is on the latter.
Now, if you add on that trainers are breeding these horses to have short lives. Everyone knows that when a horse breaks its leg, you must shoot it (according to horse trainers). So, if this is true, a breeder's #1 priority should be to make the equine as strong as possible, bone-wise and not muscle-wise. This is occurring more now, however, where breeders are breeding mostly from those horses who have raced in the most races. This will, hopefully, extend the career of these horses and make sure they are not injured out there. If we are to forever follow a sport such as this, I hope that breeders meet these criteria and breed more intelligently so that the animals that make people money aren't hurt in the long run. Thanks and let me know your opinion on the matter.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
I was raised on a ranch in Wyoming and have been around horses all my life.
Horses are accident prone and seem to seek out ways to get hurt.
If you have a horse then you will also have high vet bills. It is just the nature of the beast.
That's a shame. Are these quartercracks common in non-racing horses or do they just occur in the high-stress, high-speed racing conditions?
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/nharris1032