Posted on 12/07/2017 11:54:16 PM PST by nickcarraway
Hundreds of elite thoroughbred race horses sprinted away from flames Thursday as one of California’s major wildfires tore through a training center in San Diego County.
Not all made it.
There was no official count of how many animals were killed in the hazy confusion as both horses and humans evacuated, but trainers at San Luis Rey Downs estimated that at least a dozen had died, possibly far more.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Insurance to win, place, or show, on the underperforming ones.
Sad...and the jokes aren’t needed.
Other than admiring their beauty and having ridden on very gentle ones at my uncle’s farm when I was growing up, I know very little about the psychological nature and behavior of horses.
Ignorance admitted, I cannot help but ask why not simply release them from their stalls and pins and at least give them the chance to save themselves by fleeing under their own power?
Yes, it would be a royal pain rounding them up afterwards. Yes, there would probably be frightened horse-vehicle accidents.
Do insurance and lawsuit considerations really override all consideration for their lives? Is it really “better” to have the horses provably dead (”hopefully” from smoke inhalation before the flames reached them) in their stalls/pens?
Sounds like a perfect “damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation” for horse stable/training center owner/operators.
BTW, my comment is really about a report I read earlier concerning a small facility where the evacuation order occurred in the middle of the night and all the horses died.
So sad. I’ve seen other stories of horses that couldn’t be saved. My daughter lives in Ventura and my grandson has several friends that lost their homes, including one that didn’t have time to save her horses and other animals.
When we have dangerous fires here in West TX the first rule is cut down or break down the fences, you can sort them out later. Allot of cattle were lost in the Panhandle fires due to ignoring this age old rule. Fire breaks are as common as dirt roads out here and we keep them maintained.
There were over 400 horses at this facility. The fast-spreading fire came on so quickly that they were not able to load them all to get them out out. My understanding is that they had closed the roads to incoming trailers, so there was no other choice but to let them go. Nothing to do with insurance.
I have owned Thoroughbreds for decades; they’re beautiful, athletic creatures who are extremely accident-prone. For sure your first choice would be to safely trailer them out rather than risk the many awful things that could happen running in a blind panic.
But these heroic track workers didn’t have any choice. They did the right thing, as heartbreaking as it is.
Thanks for posting this article I just got up this morning here in Kern county and San Luis Rey training track is directly across the street from a condo that my wife’s family inherited from her mother. No one lives there but we use it when we visit family down there. I pray that the neighbors are okay.
I know, I live I. West Texas too. My son and I were just talking about that. I just watched a video of a place in San Diego that had around 500 horses, they started out getting the horses out orderly, then the fire came so fast they just opened up the gates and the humans got out of the way of the stampede.
I’m in San Angelo.
Looks like the video I saw was of the place this article is about.
North of you in Southern Howard County.
Howdy neighbor!
At least they were given a chance of life. They were fast enough to out race the flames. 400 ran for their lives, maybe 12 were lost, maybe more, but the ones who made it are the real winners. Better than dying in there stalls unable to escape.
Amen to that. Did you see the pictures from another fire of around 30 horses dead in their stalls? What a horrifying death for those poor horses. I don’t know the circumstances as to why they weren’t freed.
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