Re: George Washinton at the Breeders cup...I don't follow Racing that much?

Question

But why are they so qucik to put down a horse with broken legs..I'm sure the owners are not so quick to do it without a reason................maybe a vet or a jockey can answer me.why so quick to put the horse down..just curious

Answer 1

It is really hard to fix a bad break. Horses need to be on their feet or it messes up the circulation in their feet so they can't lay down for six weeks while the bone heals. George's break was very bad. It was an open wound - when dirt gets in that virtually guarantees infection. Also, his dislocated ankle had already cut off circulation to his foot and the tissue was dying. Laminitis is a serious complication of a leg injury which in itself can be fatal. Sometimes, even with the best intentions and tons of money you can't save horses with breaks like this.

Answer 2

cause bones on horse do not heal like a persons & therfor to prevent suffering they put them to sleep

Answer 3

Horses have to balance weight on all 4 feet to get good circulation. If one foot/leg/angle is damaged, the weight is only balanced on 3 legs. The poor circulation causes all types of problems for the horse and results in death from infections.

Answer 4

George Washington sustained an open fracture of the cannon bone in the right front fetlock and disarticulated the joint at the same time and had both sesamoids broken. This illness is incurable.

So it was a hopeless injury as far as repair and he has been euthanised. The decision was made very quickly.

Aidan O'Brien (George Washington's trainer) was on the racetrack with the horse right after it happened and he requested euthanasia.

Illness or broken limbs that would cause suffering for the animal to live with and it owuld be very painful and emotional to let  the horse live .

So most veterirarians will resort to Animal euthanasia which(Greek, "good death") is the act of inducing humane death in an animal. Euthanasia methods are designed to cause minimal pain and distress.

Answer 5

when horses break legs their tendons become bones and when that happens its hard for them to walk and do anything else and it is severly painful for them. So instead of letting them suffer they put them to sleep.

Answer 6

You pretty much have the answer above, especially from Newmarketsalsa....however.....in this particular case is there maybe something more sinister involved ?  A brilliant and quirky stallion which is a complete failure at stud. Not likely to run again.......what is the best way to make your last bit of money out of him????????

Answer 7

Horse bones don't break like human bones. Generally, they shatter like chicken bones (try taking a drumstick and breaking it, it splinters off into a lot of parts, 99% of the time, it's not a clean break). Most of the time, when the skin breaks due to such a bone break, infection is very quick to set in. In the rare cases that they don't get infected, a horse is still very susceptible to laminitis, which is very painful. The humane thing to do is to quickly euthanize the horse, to spare it unnecessary pain.

Clean fractures (like on Rags To Riches) can be healed with some time off.

Answer 8

The simple answer is that the break is too severe to save the horse.

The horse is a flight animal - meaning it survives by running away from danger rather than staying to fight it.  A horse with a leg as badly damaged as Geroge's would probably never be able to stand on the leg again let alone walk or run on it.

Just think, when a person breaks their leg you can say to them "stay in bed, don't move too much and keep the weight off the leg".  You cannot say the same to a horse!  Their instinct is to stand and try to move around.

George's fracture was the worst kind - an open fracture.  As it happened during the race the bone will have literally shattered and there was no hope for him.  Aidan took the decision quickly and we all know that it was the right one to make.

In a way, although I was annoyed at the time, it was a good thing that the Jackson's put so much time, energy and money into trying to save Barbaro, because it proved what many of us had been saying since the accident - that you CANNOT save a horse with an injury so severe.

Of course some fractures are perfectly operable and the horse can go on to live a fairly normal life: Mill Reef and Dubai Millennium would be good examples, although their accidents occured in training and therefore not at full speed.

The reason the horse is put down so quickly is that, once it is obvious that nothing can be done, the animal must be put out of it's pain as quickly as possible.  To allow the horse to continue in such a state for hours would be cruel.

Answer 9

i think horse racing should be discontinued, dog racing, too. why do human beings need to use animals in this way to be entertained? and don't even get me started on hunting, which i know is a completely different thing. but people call this a sport as well, and to call hunting a sports is just about the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. but getting back to the racing, i don't care if the horses and dogs used in these races rarely get hurt or mistreated. if it happens once it's one time too many. and i don't care if they're bred for this sort of thing. it should never have begun in the first place.

maybe this response didn't belong here, but i just heard about this horse being put down and the whole thing makes me so angry that this so-called sport is even allowed in the first place. it's just a bunch of bored rich people who can't find anything better to do with their time or their money.

Answer 10

because sometimes the brake in the leg might be to severe and nothing can be done to save the horse so the horse is put to sleep to avoid any suffering

Answer 11

yeah i read that the injury was so serious they would not have been able to save him, it was an open fracture and he probably would have ended up dieing of an infection and it would have taken longer and been more painful. so they did it quick so horse wouldnt have to suffer through it.

Answer 12

some minor fractures are not lifethreatening.  Rags to Riches, the filly who won the Belmont, fractured her leg during her last race.  But it wasn't as serious as George Washington's injury.  Rags to Riches's injury will take a small time to heal and doesn't require too much constraint for the horse.  She'll be able to stand in her stall and move around and eat, and pretty soon she'll be able to go out for walks and then get ridden again.  Unfortunately, other injuries are much more serious.  When a horse breaks its leg with multiple fractures, it's harder for the leg to heal... and that means that it has to be secured more, meaning the horse has to be more restrained.  That, itself, isn't too hard... the bad part is that if there are that many problems with one leg, it starts to create problems for the other legs.  A horse is a thousand pounds and all of its weight comes down on 4 narrow points.  If one hurts, they have to put more weight on the others.  Horses legs are really sensitive and other legs can become injured just from the added weight.  If you remember Barbaro, that's the reason that he died... his broken leg had healed, his cast was removed, but he developed issues with the other 3 legs leaving him without a good leg, so he was euthanized.  As for

George Washington, he had a serious fracture that would have required a lot of medical attention and required the horse to stand still for an extended amount of time, risking problems to his other legs.  And there was one more thing in his case...  not only did be break the leg, he also broke the skin on the leg.  An injury is far more serious when there's broken skin... broken skin allows dirt into the wound, resulting in infection.  Breaking the skin might not sound that serious... we get cuts all the time and they heal... but it's not the same for horses...  on the horses legs where the skin is wrapped tightly around bones, any cut is more likely to become infected... and when the skin is broken while the horse is on the track, there's no avoiding getting dirt in the wound.  Infections are very serious and very painful.  Add that on top of the broken leg and you have a very uncomfortable horse.

The thing is, when a person is hurt, you can stick the person in bed.  You can't do that to a horse.  A horse cannot lie down for an extended period of time... if you have ever lied on your stomach for hours, you know how much it hurts...  add a thousand pounds on top of that, and then imagine what it would feel like.  And it doesn't let the horse digest too.  You can put a horse in a sling to immobilize it for a limited time, but again we have the problem of a thousand pounds being supported by the underside of the horse.

Sometimes saving the horse is so hard and the likelihood of success is so small, and the horse would be in so much pain, that it's better to euthanize it immediately.

But there's another issue altogether... you asked about owners... the owners wouldn't do it without a reason.  Remember that racing is a business...  some owners very personally care for their horses (Gretchen Jackson visited Barbaro at the vet everyday and brought him bags of grass), and some make very limited contact with their horses.  I don't know which is the case for George Washington [note, the Jacksons bred him and sold him]...  from a purely money standpoint you want to make a profit...  a winning race horse makes a lot of money, but a retired stallion who used to be a winning race horse makes even more money.  an injured racehorse drains your money.  surgeries are expensive... horse surgeries are even more expensive than people surgeries.  There's an incentive to fixing your racehorse so that it can become a breeding stallion [people say that was the motivation behind saving Barbaro... it certainly was a future prospect, but it wasn't guaranteed... they didn't know if Barbaro was fertile... they were saving him, and then deciding from there].  If your horse is a gelding or infertile, you don't have that same incentive.  you might save the horse just because you can... but the more serious injury with the more expensive treatment is more likely to result in a quick euthanization.

And there's the fact that horses are insured.  You won't make as much as a breeding stallion would bring in, but you do get a payoff for any horse that you have to euthanize.

George Washington had a very serious injury... his chances for survival would have been under 50%.  And... George Washington had been retired last year... the only reason that he was racing in this race was because he was infertile, so he was unsuccessful at breeding.  so there wasn't that incentive to keep him alive to breed.

So often you hear pessimists saying how it's all about the money... I don't think it's ALL about the money, especially for some owners... but money is certainly always a factor.