5/23/2006: Barbaro's leg repair

[SPUCK]

What's sad is the continual press for faster horses. This means the breeding selects for thinner legs and smaller bones. The smaller and stiffer,(read brittle), the bones the faster the horse. And... the more often their legs will snap like a dry saltine. We will see this more and more often. It's what happens when we start selective breeding for one trait. Rather like Irish Setters that were bred for that classy look until they were utterly brainless.

Let me try to show this.
A modern cutting horse that has to be agile (turn a lot and quickly).


Poor Barbaro a thorobred bred for speed only. Notice the thin legs.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by SPUCK

What's sad is the continual press for faster horses. This means the breeding selects for thinner legs and smaller bones. The smaller and stiffer,(read brittle), the bones the faster the horse. And... the more often their legs will snap like a dry saltine. We will see this more and more often. It's what happens when we start selective breeding for one trait.

Isn't the thoroughbred breeding stock a relatively small and closed pool? They need new blood but I'm sure there are rules against it. The horses are more fragile and nominally faster. Look at how much time man has taken off the mile in the last hundred years and then look at the horse. I wonder if putting some standardbred into the pool wouldn't improve things?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Put some Clydesdale in for more fun. The entertainment is not in how fast they run, it's in how closely they're matched.