PETA does grab headlines, but no one notices those organizations like the Thoroughbred Retirement Association who are truly working to make the lives of horses better. If PETA is so concerned about the treatment of horses why haven’t they become more involved in educating the general public about, and trying to stop the selling of horses abroad for food?

And who can forget George Washington at the Breeders Cup last year. And of course, Barbaro.
And those are only the “high profile” cases.

And I may be wrong, but I believe Dr. Bramlage was talking about the Kentucky Derby only, not Churchill Downs when he offered that one fatality in 134 years stat.

I sincerely hope you and Dr. Bramlage are right, but if you’re not and another horse dies in a high profile race, PETA will be the least of the horserace industry worries.

TvNB

I appreciate the concern for animals, I honestly do. It just seems a little disingenuous for a fund raiser that benefits the organization is in Eight Belles’ name. Furthermore, on the PETA blog, there are a total of TWO horse-racing posts while there are eight posts about Eight Belles. This doesn’t say “PETA has been concerned from day one” — at least from my perspective.

There’s one more Eight Belles post, making it nine.

As Dr Bramlage pointed out, the Eight Belles tragedy is the first time Churchill Downs has suffered a fatality in 134 years. While it was a tragic event to witness, it is certainly not the norm. It seems to me the time would be better spent addressing thoroughbred abuse instead of freak accidents.

Not true. A serch of the ‘net will turn up plenty of folks had been “making their presence” known for years before the Eight Belles incident, a “presence” completely ignored by the horse racing industry and the media at large.

By dying on National Television in front of millions, Eight Belles (at least for the moment) changed that.

What Eight Belles did was to bring the issue before the general public in such a dramatic manner that it can no longer be ignored.

The ultimate irony is that it will be the pressure groups like Peta, NOT the Triple Crown of Big Brown that will make horse racing safer for animals and jockey’s alike.

TvNB