Category: Euthanasia

Grand National – Carnage or Spectacle?

The excitement of the 2019 Grand National is over and it is time for the usual post mortem. One horse killed and another taken away by ambulance appears according to the media and racing authorities to have been a pretty good result. Two other horses, Forest des Aigles and Crucial Role, were also euthanised the day before but have received little attention. Track authorities and the British Horse Association (BHA) are obviously saddened again and Dickon White, of the Jockey Club  Stated:

“As a sport of animal lovers, we wanted every horse to come home – and sadly that’s not been the case with Up For Review”

a statement which makes it is difficult to get one’s head round what qualifies as being an animal lover these days. The media state that “38 runners returned safely” – but returned safely to where? Obviously their stable as they didn’t finish the race. Only 19 (47%) out of 40 actually past the finishing post.

Riderless race horse

It is not difficult to deduce from the statistics that most of the horses present just provide the spectacle and have no chance at all of competing or finishing the race. People watch the National for the excitement and anticipation of the stampede to the first fence when everyone holds their breath to see if they get over safely or fall. But do some racegoers secretly hope that there will be a spectacular pile up rather like in Formula One when the cars approach the first bend  or the cycle riders in the Tour de France. There is a certain element of wishing for tragedy as no one wants a “boring”race.

Carnage at the fences.

This year at the first fence Up For Review was brought down by another faller and was fatally injured and at the sixth fence three fell and one pulled up. So we had already lost 8 horses by the sixth fence and then the race continued without incident until we get to the 21st fence where a horse pulled up. Horses were then pulled up or refused at the 25th, 26th, and at the 27th a rider was unseated, then 4 horses refused or pulled up at the 28th and 5 at the 29th.

There is an obvious pattern here: the attrition rate increases the further into the race they get when more horses find that the going is too tough. These are all horses that are perhaps not fit or strong enough to last the course – the cannon fodder to make the race a spectacle and for who the race is too much of a challenge. It’s not science, but seems logical that horses tire just like humans in marathons or steeplechases and cannot find that last effort to finish.

The race is 14 fences too long & involves too many horses.

The racing fraternity are proud that the National is the longest National Hunt race in Britain and that it is the ultimate test of horse and jockey jumping 30 fences over a distance of 2.25 miles. And this is the problem. The race is too long, has too many high jumps and too many participants.

Many campaigners including the RSPCA believe the best way forward is to work with the authorities to improve the welfare of the horses during the race which they state they have done successfully for the last thirty years and list many so-called improvements, but most of these are just peripheral to the main problem. Thirty years on we still have horses dying and suffering and being injured and more importantly horses being pushed beyond their limits.

There is no chance of the race being banished in the foreseeable future because of all the tradition and history behind it just like fox-hunting, not to mention the huge financial benefits to everyone involved. And of course supporters want carnage and spectacle not just any old horse race, because this is what they watch it for. The only way of reducing the suffering is to shorten the race to one lap of the course, cut the numbers involved and lower the fences, but this is never going to happen.

Related articles:

Endurance racing causes more deaths than the Grand National
Horrors of the Hobby Horse Hall Race Track Remembered

Top animal charities spend £500 million a year saving unwanted animals.

Are animal re-homing charities failing animals?

We all know that the thousands of animal “re-homing” charities in the UK and around the world are doing wonderful work in finding new homes for hundreds of thousands of animals each year, because they are quick to tell us so and we see their great work depicted on television documentaries and in the press. As donating public we revel in the glow of sad stories and happy endings of animals finding “forever homes” and for this reason we throw millions at these charities to enable them to continue.

The top eight UK charities spend £500,000,000 each year to support the infrastructure to “save” and “rescue” animals from us humans. In the case of the Dog’s Trust, the UK’s leading dog charity, this works out at £8,100 per dog to care for and re-home the 13,141 dogs (2017 figures).

It would seem on the surface that the animal re-homing charities are doing a really good job and making the most of the money we give to them, but should they judge their success by the number of animals they take in and re-home or by what they are accomplishing in reducing numbers in the first place.

The Humane Societies of the United States (HSUS) is constantly criticised for not giving enough of their funds to animal shelters, but they once succinctly responded by declaring that their aim was to “prevent cruelty and stop animals entering animal shelters in the first place”. It could be argued that the re-homing charities are perpetuating the problem of irresponsible pet ownership by offering a free service to accommodate and re-cycle unwanted pets, strengthening the creed that they are disposable objects.

Each year the number of unwanted and abandoned animals never seems to decrease.

Are animal shelters just re-cycling plants for irresponsible owners.

Each year the major UK animal re-homing charities take in tens of thousands of unwanted dogs, over a hundred thousand cats, thousands of horses and donkeys and hundreds of thousands of rabbits and other small animals. All these figures could probably be doubled, trebled or even quadrupled if you consider the numbers taken in by the hundreds of smaller UK charities.

Local authorities supposedly dealt with 7,000 stray, abandoned and unwanted dogs in 2017 of which over 2,000 were put to sleep although these figures seem far too low. The Cats Protection charity alone cares for nearly 50,000 cats annually.

If official figures are correct, we are supposedly getting on top of the abandoned and stray dog numbers on the streets, but half of the dogs that the Dog’s Trust accept, 6,500 (2017 figures), are strays from local authorities. Any slight decrease is more than matched by the increasing number handed into animal rescue centres by fickle owners so the status quo remains despite continuing campaigns and free neutering. This results in more facilities opening to cope with the continual flood. To make matters worse we are increasingly importing other countries’ stray and unwanted animals. We have had a cat and horse crisis for several years now and an increasing problem of unwanted exotic pets which has resulted in even more charities to rescue them.

While charities are happy to continue picking up the burden there is no incentive for the government or the law to intervene or take notice. The UK Government almost entirely washes it hands of the subject and even relies on animal charities to collate figures on the state of our animal keeping habits such as the RSPCA with their cruelty figures and the PDSA with their PAWS survey otherwise we would have no idea of the problems.

Kittens, rescue, animal rescue,, abandoned, unwanted
The number of stray and unwanted cats in the UK is incalculable.

There must be more to animal welfare than just re-homing dogs and cats.

The charities will argue that they only exist for this purpose, but surely this is a short-sighted outlook and instead of proudly proclaiming the increasing numbers they are finding homes for, they should strive to decrease the numbers becoming unwanted in the first place.  There must be more to animal welfare than just re-homing dogs and cats, but most charities seem happy to just tread water, accept the status quo and never make inroads into solving the major welfare problems. Do we just accept this as a fact of life and money well spent or should we expect more from them? Perhaps it is time for a completely new mind-set.