The camera cut away from her, but it should have stayed on her. Eight Belles had run herself half to death yesterday, and now the vets were finishing the job as she lay on her side, her beautiful figure a black hump on the track. Horses don’t just fall down like that, you thought as NBC flitted away, cowardlike, from the sickening picture to the more appealing image of the Kentucky Derby victor, Big Brown…
First, the winner startled bucking his rider after the race. Then they say that the second place horse, Eight Belles, was on the ground nearby. Later the vet appeared and told us the horse had been euthanized on the spot with two broken ankles. This article goes on to say that horses are being overbred. I suppose that compared to a cattle slaughterhouse or a chicken processing plant, the death of an "overbred" racing horse doesn’t seem like much. But it sure seemed sad to me. And it sure felt like there was more to that story than we were told. I don’t have any idea if my thought about that is true. That’s what seven and a half years of lies in the daily paper does to a person. Every story is suspect…
Thank you for the slaughter plant analogy – what an enormous point you made. I’ve worked with and around horses all my life, own and love them too. I’m also a vegetarian and convinced humans are dietary Nazi’s. The absolute horror of a slaughter plant is beyond description. I’m devastated for the loss of Eight Belles – such a tragic and public horror. Network TV coverage, in a slaughter house, would bring even the coldest people to their knees.