I think both sides here have a point.
It's a little unfair to condemn all showjumping as very bad for horses' legs . . . that's a bit of an overstatement. Out of condition horses get injured, and sometimes one just has bad luck (vide Barbaro). But a sensible conditioning program and good preventive vet care, shoeing, etc. prevent a lot of injuries, and many show horses have long careers quite sound.
Another overstatement was the idea that show horses are kept confined and not worked sufficiently to avoid injury. Reputable show horse owners and riders DO take excellent care of their horses. They do turn them out (properly protected with UV sheets) and make sure they're in shape for their work.
And most do NOT just discard them if they're past work. Sometimes they're perfectly useful for ponying, hacking, or as a school horse. I was lucky enough to ride a couple of Earl "Red" Fraser's retired show horses back in the day, wow was that amazing. A savvy old show hunter or jumper can teach you a lot!
Of course there are bad owners who treat their horses like inanimate objects, who make them stand in stalls all day long, don't condition them, etc. But we don't judge the entire group by the bad apples. . . we'd all be in trouble if everybody did that.
Woodbutcher's response was a bit strong, but on the other hand if you substitute "racehorse" for "showhorse", the complaint sounded a lot like "all racing is bad, all racehorses are abused, Barbaro should never have been raced" and so forth. We went through all that when Barbaro was hurt, and while there are racehorse owners who don't treat their animals right, Barbaro's owners are not in that category. So it may have been a natural reaction to fly off the handle a little at what seemed like a blanket condemnation of all hunter/jumper owners.
(Don't ask me about rodeo . . . I only worked one summer on a ranch out West!)
I agree I was generalizing.
In my mind I was thinking of the average horse owners that I've run into at the stables around here. not the high dollar professionals. OK. IMO, there are more average horse owners vs. the pros.
And I agree that most injuries come from out of condition horses. BUT, around here, I just never get the impression that these average horse owners condition enough, hence so many lame jumping horses, endurance horses, barrel horses, etc...
I think the type of jumping you do, cross country, makes more sense then just going around an arena jumping for the sake of jumping. JMO. But then I don't care for much arena work. But I also think any jumping even for a conditioned horse is high impact, and will wear a horses joints down quicker, but there is no way for either side to prove either way. That's going to be all opinion.
After my initial response, I was just responding in kind to what IMO, was way overboard reaction...:)
I hope I did not offend you AAM...I didn't mean to offend anyone...just stating my opinion. But I will say to you, I have no doubt that your horse is one of the ones that is most likely properly conditioned, or you wouldn't jump her till she was.
Peace:)
Becky