As an animal lover, I don't really see anything wrong with the chuckwagons based on my experiences - in fact I encourage it.
The average race-horse "retires" between 5 and 7 years old. These horses can live until their 20s if they get out of the circuit healthy. But what do you think happens to the vast majority of these average race horses? The great ones obviously head to stud farms, the really lucky ones go to loving families as pets, the rest...well don't.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/vickerye...thoroughbreds/
Quote:
The U.S. shut down the last remaining slaughterhouses for horses in 2007, but still allows horses to be shipped over our borders ... horses travel 24 hours or more, without food, water or rest.
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Complicating matters, horse brains are located further back in their skulls, making them harder to knock unconscious even when a clean shot is delivered. Many regain consciousness within 30 seconds. As a result, too many end up getting shot repeatedly in the head and many are still conscious when hoisted by one leg, bled out and butchered. This is only how they do it in Canada, by the way. In Mexico, the horses are repeatedly stabbed in the spine with puntilla knives to disable them, then butchered fully awake.
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The chuckwagon horses you see, for the most part, are the lucky ones. They are well-cared for a loved and can live for many healthy years on a nice ranch where they are still
employed to do the one thing they've been taught and forced to do for their entire life - run. It's unfortunate when there are accidents, you can see the grief in the owners and riders who care about these animals more than anyone. But euthanized after breaking a leg falling down after getting a second shot to make it to adulthood or being sent to Mexico years earlier to be butchered alive? Hmm, tough choice.
Get rid of all horse-racing before you bring up the chuckwagons.