The ugly underside of our favorite sport...

[Mulerider]

Originally Posted by green80

the problem is that once the owner/trainer/breeder sells a horse to a third party, the previous owner has no control as to what this buyer does with the horse. You may sell your horse to someone that convinces you that they have the best of intentions for the horse and then the horse winds up at the kill pen a few days later.

Green80, if Delta/Evangeline won't incorporate Tampa's language into their no-slaughter policy, what do you think of this idea?

1. When any horse is sold, the verified name of the purchaser must be submitted to the track, which maintains a list of sold horses and their buyers.

2. If any such horse appears in a meat auction or kill lot, upon notification the track will add the buyer's name to a publicly posted document readily available to all connections.

3. If any connection subsequently sells a horse to any buyer posted on the aforementioned list, the connections will lose stall and racing privileges.

Will this end horses ending up in kill lots? Of course not. Could it make life more difficult for the backside meat man? Maybe.

[Fager Fan]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

Green80, if Delta/Evangeline won't incorporate Tampa's language into their no-slaughter policy, what do you think of this idea?

1. When any horse is sold, the verified name of the purchaser must be submitted to the track, which maintains a list of sold horses and their buyers.

2. If any such horse appears in a meat auction or kill lot, upon notification the track will add the buyer's name to a publicly posted document readily available to all connections.

3. If any connection subsequently sells a horse to any buyer posted on the aforementioned list, the connections will lose stall and racing privileges.

Will this end horses ending up in kill lots? Of course not. Could it make life more difficult for the backside meat man? Maybe.

The track has nothing to do with registrations. Besides, most horses' papers aren't on file at the track when given away or sold.

The auction buyers are somewhat irrelevant given that there's usually a middleman between the owner and auction buyer.

[green80]

There simply has to be a way to get rid of racehorses that are no longer wanted. When I have a horse that is not longer useful as a racehorse I make every effort to sell it or even give it away to someone that will do something with it other than send it to the killer. Sometime it takes months. These rescue buyers will buy one from the killpen but won't even take one from an owner. Unless you have been there you may not know, but there is another side to the story when it comes to cutting your losses on a racehorse.

[Mulerider]

Originally Posted by Fager Fan

The track has nothing to do with registrations. Besides, most horses' papers aren't on file at the track when given away or sold.

The auction buyers are somewhat irrelevant given that there's usually a middleman between the owner and auction buyer.

I'm not talking about registrations. Example:

Fager Fan races at Delta Downs, has a horse he wants to sell, and finds a buyer, Mulerider. Fager sells the horse to Mulerider, after verifying Mulerider's ID.

Mulerider assures Fager that he will give the horse a nice permanent home, but Mulerider is actually a middleman for Jacob Thompson.

Fager notifies Delta Downs of the sale, including the name of the horse and the buyer. The track keeps a simple log of such sales, each of which takes about two minutes to enter into Excel.

A week later a rescue organization spots the horse at Thompson's Kill Lot and identifies it. The rescue notifies the track of the discovery. The track consults its log, and identifies Mulerider as the purchaser of Fager's horse, which is now in the slaughter pipeline.

The track immediately adds Mulerider's name to a list of buyers that all current owners and trainers are prohibited from selling a horse to, under penalty of losing stall or racing privileges. The track makes that list available to connections at all times on its website, in the racing secretary's office, and prominently posted on the backside.

If an owner or trainer fails to notify Delta of a sale that occurs after this rule has gone into effect, and that horse is subsequently found in a slaughter facility, the owner or trainer will be presumed to have directly sold the horse to slaughter, and will face the sanctions mentioned above.

I admit that this is an unconventional approach to reducing the number of backside meat buyers. But it is at least an effort to find a partial solution to a problem that Delta has shown no interest in addressing.

[Fager Fan]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

I'm not talking about registrations. Example:

Fager Fan races at Delta Downs, has a horse he wants to sell, and finds a buyer, Mulerider. Fager sells the horse to Mulerider, after verifying Mulerider's ID.

Mulerider assures Fager that he will give the horse a nice permanent home, but Mulerider is actually a middleman for Jacob Thompson.

Fager notifies Delta Downs of the sale, including the name of the horse and the buyer. The track keeps a simple log of such sales, each of which takes about two minutes to enter into Excel.

A week later a rescue organization spots the horse at Thompson's Kill Lot and identifies it. The rescue notifies the track of the discovery. The track consults its log, and identifies Mulerider as the purchaser of Fager's horse, which is now in the slaughter pipeline.

The track immediately adds Mulerider's name to a list of buyers that all current owners and trainers are prohibited from selling a horse to, under penalty of losing stall or racing privileges. The track makes that list available to connections at all times on its website, in the racing secretary's office, and prominently posted on the backside.

If an owner or trainer fails to notify Delta of a sale that occurs after this rule has gone into effect, and that horse is subsequently found in a slaughter facility, the owner or trainer will be presumed to have directly sold the horse to slaughter, and will face the sanctions mentioned above.

I admit that this is an unconventional approach to reducing the number of backside meat buyers. But it is at least an effort to find a partial solution to a problem that Delta has shown no interest in addressing.

Okay, I understand what you're saying, but think there are still a couple problematic spots. Transfer/sales and deaths are completely at the owner's discretion once its racing career is over. The JC doesn't require that it be notified in the event of either. I don't know if the tracks or the JC can require that the owner perform a specific duty (in this case fill out a specific contract and requiring of ID of the buyer) on what is at that point a retired racehorse. The other problem is that there isn't just one track to notify of a slaughter buyer or middle man's identity, but really all tracks.

[Mulerider]

Good read:

24 Pieces of Property

Excerpt:

'But the problem here is that some owners, race tracks and trainers don’t play by the rules, as the 24 thoroughbreds filmed in the Thompson kill lot, marked “direct ship,” attest. In their specific case, it is fair to speculate that at least one individual on the Delta Downs backstretch, with the support of owners and trainers and the collusion of Delta Downs, is prepared to get thoroughbreds off the track and out of the country without a single thought to their rehabilitation and re-homing."

"However, for “The 24” in a kill lot in Louisiana on March 9, 2018, none of these arguments mattered. Many were youngsters and most were terrified. Some just hung their heads, sensing that something new and not very good was happening to them."



Mule

(P.S. -- All 24 of these horses were rescued.)

[jay68802]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

Good read:

24 Pieces of Property

Excerpt:

'But the problem here is that some owners, race tracks and trainers don’t play by the rules, as the 24 thoroughbreds filmed in the Thompson kill lot, marked “direct ship,” attest. In their specific case, it is fair to speculate that at least one individual on the Delta Downs backstretch, with the support of owners and trainers and the collusion of Delta Downs, is prepared to get thoroughbreds off the track and out of the country without a single thought to their rehabilitation and re-homing."

"However, for “The 24” in a kill lot in Louisiana on March 9, 2018, none of these arguments mattered. Many were youngsters and most were terrified. Some just hung their heads, sensing that something new and not very good was happening to them."



Mule

(P.S. -- All 24 of these horses were rescued.)

The problem is, they do follow the rules. It is just the rules, by design, have a hole they can drive a truck through. The reason the rules are wrote the way they are, is so the track, owners and trainers can all say we followed the rules and point the finger elsewhere.

[Mulerider]

Originally Posted by jay68802

The problem is, they do follow the rules. It is just the rules, by design, have a hole they can drive a truck through. The reason the rules are wrote the way they are, is so the track, owners and trainers can all say we followed the rules and point the finger elsewhere.

The problem with Delta is that it makes up the rules at it goes. On Delta's Twitter page is a pinned tweet that promises punishment for any owner or trainer that "knowingly" sells a horse to slaughter. But Delta's slaughter policy as outlined in its current stall agreement does not contain any reference to "knowingly," nor does any other Delta document so far as I can tell.

Delta aside, some tracks have much tougher language. Tampa Bay's policy, for instance, states that connections may not sell a horse to slaughter either directly or INDIRECTLY, and that connections must perform due diligence checks on any person that purchases their horses.

Big difference.

[martini]

The posts and rescue efforts documented here are wonderful. There are so many good people doing good work, and they should be applauded--really, heroes! I get that we cannot retrain and find homes for every horse. But if an owner cannot be held responsible to humanely euthanize an unwanted horse, but sends he/she to slaughter, the owner needs to be banned from the sport in all states.

In terms of public perception, what has happened at Delta Downs is the kind of stuff that makes even horesplayers realize that the sport is headed to the level of whales at SeaWorld or elephants at the circus (i.e., an old, bygone era). I love the game, as well as the sport, but so many of the people in it are garbage. The slaughter issue needs to be cleaned up at every track, so the good apples can help revive the sport's image. And there are many good people in the sport, for sure.

[Mulerider]

Don't have all the details, but one is a filly, not quite four, named APT TO SMILE. She last raced at Evangeline on May 26, 2017.

Her lifetime record was 4:1-2-0.

Here she is on the track:

Apt to Smile1.jpg

Here she is at Thomson's Kill Lot last night. Note the eyes. That's Jacob Thompson standing behind her.

Apt to Smile2.jpg

[Denny]

Anyone interested in this thread should read Mark Berner's current piece at HorseRaceInsider.

Its part 1 of a planned three part series on this topic.

[Mulerider]

OLE DOC was a Delta/Evangeline workhorse. A 6-year-old gelding, he was last trained, according to Equibase, by Doris Hebert. His last owner was Robert J. Esponge, Jr.

OLE DOC had a lifetime record of 28:5-4-4, with earnings of $102,485. His last race was on Jan. 3 at Delta Downs.

A couple of weeks after that race he was standing in Thompson's Kill Lot. OLE DOC was one of the original Delta 11 rescued this year.

Life is a little better now for OLE DOC. He's a resident of the Secretariat Center in Kentucky, a re-schooling facilty, and apparently is pretty popular with staff and visitors.

https://twitter.com/mmsc04/status/980135771620470785

[clicknow]

Originally Posted by Lemon Drop Husker

When you have a $4K claimer that can't hit the board and will never be claimed with zero breeding value, what are you supposed to do as an owner? Keep eating the cost? Make him a family pet? l.

A certain amount of $$ is taken out for aftercare, isn't it?.

I have no problem with these being humanely euthanized.

But to ship them to Mexico, in trailers, to the kill lot, where many of them are bitten, injured, terrified on the way, and some arrive at the kill lot in very bad shape or dead.......it doesn't seem the way to treat these beings who have carried humans on their backs and worked hard.


Call the vet and spare these horses the ultimate terror and horrific "end of life" that many of them face.

[Mulerider]

https://twitter.com/mmsc04/status/980177722998771714

[Fager Fan]

Originally Posted by Mulerider

Don't have all the details, but one is a filly, not quite four, named APT TO SMILE. She last raced at Evangeline on May 26, 2017.

Her lifetime record was 4:1-2-0.

Here she is on the track:

Attachment 21642

Here she is at Thomson's Kill Lot last night. Note the eyes. That's Jacob Thompson standing behind her.

Attachment 21643

In fairness, that's how any horse looks when turning its eyes but not its head. But a horse ending up in Thompson's lot, where he barely feeds them or give minimal care while he plays his extortion game, is not where anyone wants to see a horse end up. I'm glad to see any horse not in his hands, but he uses the bail money to do it all over again. There are a lot of "rescues" that are fronts for Thompson to sell his horses, with the "rescues" putting money into their pockets. It's all a disgusting racket, with the poor horses used as pawns.