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" All the folks who use ground reins or stake out their horses are taking the same risk. I have seen a bucking horse get his front foot through his HALTER and throw himself down (completely unharmed). Even a horse that's been trained to ground-tie will occasionally step on his reins and hoick himself in the mouth. A broken neck is just a very, very unusual consequence.

These folks I'm sure are sorry that this horse broke his neck, and it sounds like a freak accident to me. I agree that you're "feeling strongly" about this, but I'm not sure you're thinking clearly.

Just curious, how much day to day experience do you yourself have with horses? It seems to me that you don't have a realistic view of the risks inherent in the trade."

Well, I do lack in one particular area: I'm not a cowboy and while certain risks are unavoidable, I suppose will will just have to disagree where that line is drawn. Perhaps my life spent working with and training horses is not enough unless I chew tobacco or fence my horses with barbed wire, but then I never claimed to pass any of those tests. If I am strange to some because I actually thought this trough, the charge is welcomed. There are many serious and thoughtful equestrians who also this position and outside of the Rodeo circuit, I'm sure it's most of them. We just simply will have to agree to disagree on this one.

I worked one summer on a cattle ranch. They thought I was a wuss. (But my cow pony was doing half-passes and jumping three hay bales by the end of the summer - they did think that was pretty neat.)

But the fact remains that half-broke mustangs are simply not treated with the care and attention that my highly-trained three-day-event horse gets. Cowboys haven't got enough time in the day, and they've got more than one horse to tend to plus a job to get done.

You might as well gripe to a fellow who earns his living training hunting dogs that he doesn't have soft pillows and pink ribbons for his dogs like the lady with the Teacup Poodle. And hunting dogs ARE at greater risk for injury and death than that spoiled lap dog . . . they cut themselves on stuff, get tangled in decoy lines (we had to wade in and rescue a dog at a hunt test three weeks ago who did just that - he might have drowned if we hadn't gone in and extricated him), encounter porcupines, and God forbid occasionally get shot when they break on a point. But you can't eliminate the known risks -- and still get the job done.

All of us are sad that the horse was so tragically injured. But your rant against the horsemen involved is so strong that it does not allow for us to grieve the horse, only work to calm you down from this blood lust you have for the cowboys involved.

I know a lot of horsemen and very few real cowboys, but I know some handlers who are less humane and less careful than myself. Still, none of us who are involved in horses need people screaming for our blood when freak accidents happen with the training, exhibition or handling of horses. Outright cruelty yes... But this hasn't been shown to have crossed that line.