Activists lock down Chuckwagon track

[calgarygeologist]

Chuckwagons are pretty tame and safe for horses compared to steeplechase horse racing. I watched my first steeplechase about two years when I happen to catch a broadcast on CBC and it was brutal on the horses. I don't remember the details but I think it was about 40 horses that started and less than 10 finished. I think they put down about a dozen horses on the stop, under a tarp on the track.

It was crazy.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Table 5

Are you suggesting Shania Twin is not world class?

Meh, that don't impress me much.


I'm so sorry.

[Kjesse]

The point of the chuckwagons is the skill of the driver combined with the athleticism and training of the horses. There's no doubt its dangerous to the horses moreso than the drivers by a large margin, but at least the intent is there to display the horses as athletes not just prey-- and those horses get the best treatment and training possible before they rise to the level where they are entered into a major race like the Calgary Stampede.

I'm not taking a hard stand here, but if we're going to say no chuckwagon races in favour of the welfare of horses, to be consistent we have to look also at the welfare of the animals we eat whose lives are brutal compared to the life of a racing horse. Cows, pigs, chickens, and everything else. Those slaughterhouses are brutal.

[Nage Waza]

Spray them down with some 'cow juice' and then let the bulls loose.

[Daradon]

Yeah its getting harder to defend the chucks every year. Ive admitted in the past I'm a bit of a hypocrite one the stampede, though its a fine line.

Behind the scenes is quite different. These ranchers, these farmers love their animals. And money that is made is able to give older animals good lives. Out to pasture, instead of glue.

But there have been too many 'accidents' at the chucks over the last ten years. It's becoming the exception over the norm. Even the year they changed it to make it safer a horse (or more) died.

The horses love to run. They enjoy events like this. And its not like horse racing as far as I know where they are pumped full of every known steroid. Maybe I'm wrong. Its happened on occasion.

The activists don't have the full story, far from it. As I said before its a weird thing to single out. It's very low on the totem pole as far as animal treatment. But I agree, there have been too many accidents. And making it safer didn't really make it safer. So I agree, there is a problem.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by pylon

The sooner they stop this stupid carnival of cruelty the better. We don't need our cities signature event to be such a slack jawed, backwoods, barbaric gong show. Calgary no longer needs the Stampede to identify itself. We are a world class city, but mutilating animals for pleasure is anything but world class. It's a black eye we need to rid ourselves of. Run the festival portion, just get rid of the damn rodeo already. At least the murder events.

inb4: But I am such a1337 cowboy wearing my Budweiser buckle, Jack Daniels Cowbot hat, and faux snake skin boots while I shuttle my kids around in a Volvo. I am the definition of a cowboy.

inb4: But you eat meat, and chickens, and they get the mean treatment too you hypocrite.

inb4: But it is so good for the economy.

Yeah, we could also divert the Bow River California on a mega pipeline, and that would be awesome for the economy too! Doesn't make it right.

inb4: But Oilsands!!!!!11!!!11!1

[chockfullofgoodness]

Originally Posted by pylon

The sooner they stop this stupid carnival of cruelty the better. We don't need our cities signature event to be such a slack jawed, backwoods, barbaric gong show. Calgary no longer needs the Stampede to identify itself. We are a world class city, but mutilating animals for pleasure is anything but world class. It's a black eye we need to rid ourselves of. Run the festival portion, just get rid of the damn rodeo already. At least the murder events.

inb4: But I am such a1337 cowboy wearing my Budweiser buckle, Jack Daniels Cowbot hat, and faux snake skin boots while I shuttle my kids around in a Volvo. I am the definition of a cowboy.

inb4: But you eat meat, and chickens, and they get the mean treatment too you hypocrite.

inb4: But it is so good for the economy.

Yeah, we could also divert the Bow River California on a mega pipeline, and that would be awesome for the economy too! Doesn't make it right.

inb4: But Oilsands!!!!!11!!!11!1

But isn't that true? (Unless you're a vegan)

[PsYcNeT]

My favorite response is the one that comes from the heart:

Who the #### cares, they're ####ing horses. They're treated like goddamn kings compared to 99% of all animals on this planet up until their possible untimely death.

[Jbo]

Saw this response on Facebook and pretty much agree...

"Realistically, every single thing you do or don't do in a day is cruel to someone, something or a group of someones or somethings"

These animals get treated very well and are pretty much family to the racers that race them.

[Tiger]

Originally Posted by J-bo09

Saw this response on Facebook and pretty much agree...

"Realistically, every single thing you do or don't do in a day is cruel to someone, something or a group of someones or somethings"

These animals get treated very well and are pretty much family on the racers that race them.

And they are often racing horses that would have been slaughtered at 3 or 4 years old, instead they are treated well and run chuckwagon races. So shutting down chuckwagon mean more horses killed

[vegasbound]

I was checking my phone and this caught my eye but as someone who rodeo's and is trying to make it my living, I am going to take a giant step back from the keyboard before I say something I might regret later. That and I need a shower because I am covered in blood from having to help the vet put down a friend's horse that broke his leg in two tonight. Want to know how it happened? The horse slipped. In a field. Sh*t happens, unfortunately. That's all I will really say on the subject.

[Flacker]

These horses are bred, live, and breath for one thing, to run, and to run as fast as they can. These are thoroughbred race horses that either aren't quite fast enough to be viable to race, or have sustained an injury (or their offspring) and are given a second chance to run. This is what they enjoy, this is their passion.

These horses are treated to the highest standard of care and conditions. Stampede and chuckwagon stock should be the least of the activists worries.

[Oling_Roachinen]

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/

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.
...
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.

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.

[chockfullofgoodness]

Originally Posted by pylon

When one goes down, they all go down, and hundreds of pounds of wood and steel crush their legs.

Yes horse racing has the odd broken leg fatality, but Chucks amplify the problem to a ridiculous level. Every year there seems to be multiple horse fatalities at the Rangeland derby. I wish there was a year by year chart I could find. But I do remember 3 going down at the centennial. I quit going to the Stampede in the early 2000's after I watched a wreck from the stands that killed a few horses.

I am all for celebrating western heritage. Cool, neato, and all that jazz. But to me, they should be looking for a proactive way to phase out the 'bad' events. People will still go without the rodeo. The grand stand show is amazing in itself. Maybe instead of the rodeo, book the absolute top headlining Country acts in the world, and have the worlds greatest week and a half long country music concert. Not my cup of tea, but I would bet there are far more country music fans than rodeo fans out there. 4 hours of superstars, every single night. It will probably fill more seats than the rodeo. And bring in more people from across the globe.

That would probably cost more money than the entire budget for the whole Stampede. And that's if you could get Country Music's biggest acts together at the same time, which you probably couldn't.

[Minnie]

Many years ago, I babysat regularly for one of the 'old guys' of chuckwagon racing (he wasn't an old guy then but he's one of the old guys now) - he treated his horses better than anyone or anything else, I think, lol.

As for the protesters, meh. Leave 'em locked to the rail and run the race anyway.

[chockfullofgoodness]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Many years ago, I babysat regularly for one of the 'old guys' of chuckwagon racing (he wasn't an old guy then but he's one of the old guys now) - he treated his horses better than anyone or anything else, I think, lol.

As for the protesters, meh. Leave 'em locked to the rail and run the race anyway.

Exactly. No one takes those people seriously anyway. They should be looking for jobs, not attention.

[Dion]

The chuckwagon races must go on!

All horse sport is risky, because for all their size and power, horses are actually quite fragile animals in crucial parts of their bodies — mainly in their feet and leg tendons and ligaments. Chuckwagon races may exhibit somewhat elevated risks, but there is no horse sport that has none (including Dressage, where overtraining can produce injuries, and where one could argue that horses’ natural need for liberty is so curtailed at the upper echelons of the sport in order to protect these valuable animals that it is a form of abuse).

Many a horse has also died on racetracks. They have heart attacks or experience sudden ligament or bone injuries that are so serious they have to be put down. It isn’t because people who own them are careless, irresponsible or uncaring. These are all extremely valuable horses. They are the best cared-for horses in the world. Perhaps 1% of their lives is spent working at full capacity under difficult conditions. The rest of the time they are fed, housed, exercised, groomed and loved like no other creatures on Earth. Apart from dressage, elite competition horses are doing what they love to do: run and jump. They are the equivalent of working Labradors, who may sometimes be covered in mud, exhausted and hungry, but are the most contented creatures you’d ever find.

When you consider the number of horses that are involved in all these sports, and then look at the number of horses that have actually died as a direct victim of the sport itself — that is, not from an unanticipated heart attack, or some inherent physical deficit nobody could have known about — the ratio is not statistically alarming.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...es-must-go-on/

[stampsx2]

What hasn't been mentioned is that some of the horses get heart attacks.

I've abandoned everything to do with the stampede simply because of the rodeo. I don't invite guests to Calgary during the stampede after being emberassed over the dead horses announcement on the radio. Leave everything but the rodeo and i'm in. The rodeo is an emberassment to our world class city.

Other than that, this thread is really confusing, the owners love their animals and they are well cared for yet they race their horses to a possible death. Lots of money has been put into training these horses for the races yet they have been saved from the slaughter. Bit of contradiction in here.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by stampsx2

Other than that, this thread is really confusing, the owners love their animals and they are well cared for yet they race their horses to a possible death. Lots of money has been put into training these horses for the races yet they have been saved from the slaughter. Bit of contradiction in here.

There's nothing confusing or contradicting there. Horses cost money to upkeep, the owners and riders aren't making a ton of money off these animals but the races do give them enough to at least pursue a bit of a living from them.

Remove the chuckwagons and they wouldn't be able to afford to keep the horses around as pets. The horses, because again they cost a lot of money to take care, would therefore not be bought and end up in slaughterhouses.

[Angelamc]

I want to know more about how a horse gets a heart attack?