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 Post subject: Breeding weaker horses?
PostPosted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:17 pm 
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Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 10:20 am
Posts: 515
The breeding shed has been getting a bad rap to
producing a less superior horse when we should be looking at the training
shedrow. Training philosophies have not really changed that much in the last
50 or so years to my way of thinking, but training protocols sure have!



There was a different mentality back in the old days than now. Horsemen were
often country folk which involved being brought up, working horses as a
means of survival. All horses were truly beasts of burden and that
motivating concept has been lost from today's sensibilities. Unless you were
raised around, say your grandfather, who actually lived in a pre-auto era,
you will never really know this mentality of "man and working horse". Horses
were not babied under any circumstance and many were brutally treated under
today's standards. Discipline and mileage were important training flavors,
never to be shirked. A horse would gallop or work on a daily basis, seldom
missing a day. I would venture a standard of 2 to 2.5 miles of galloping
daily to be the norm back 50 or more years ago. The question of how fast
these miles were galloped will never be known, nor should they. Each horse
is an individual as was the trainer who managed them, but chances are they
were not loped around the track as is often seen today.--loping at a pace
that a jogging man could easily keep up with.

Preston Burch (1953 book) usually states that a two year old should be
galloped 3-4 weeks at the 2-2.5 mile gallop range before breezing. Usually
he would breeze every third day, thereafter. Keene Dangerfield in his 1946
training book seems to have a similar opinion of galloping most two year
olds a month at the 2 mile length before going to a work schedule of every
third day. He would gallop the day following a work, one mile, and then
resume the 2 mile gallop the following day before another work day. Robert
Collins in his 1938 book tends to follow these two trainer's
galloping/training patterns as well. You will not generally see long gallop
miles beyond the 3 mile range. For one thing, labor was as precious back
then as now. There is only so many hours in a day that can be devoted to one
animal. The earliest training book I have, written by the Brit, William Day
in 1880 suggests that two year olds should gallop about one mile at "half
speed". Older horses were generally galloped the length of the course they
had to run, whatever that may be, twice a day. They would gallop at
half-speed for 1.5 to 2 miles; walk for half an hour and then repeat the
gallop. I am offering this Victorian British view of training only as a
curiosity. They have different training grounds and racing systems over
there.

Differences? I think particularly away from the east coast, you have been
getting a strong influx of quarter horse trainers into the sport. If you
have ever been around these people, you know they don't believe in training
their horses tough. They seem to think freshness in their horses mean little
work. They have brought this idea of training over to the thoroughbreds.
You won't run quite as much into this fresh horse bias on the east coast
where you may have a strong point-to-point or steeple chase influence. Those
boys appreciate a fit horse!Personally, I think modern trainers tend to push
young horses toward their first start with less galloping and breezing
mileage under their girths and they tend to race them into shape as compared
to older methods and training philosophies. This all produces poor bone
remodeling and a horse that tries to make it to the wire on will alone---a
recipe for disaster. I would suppose that many modern race track trainers
would gallop their horses from 1-1.5 miles with little warm-up preparation.
They also tend to give many more days off and to replace their horse's
gallop days with "shed-rowing" (hand/mounted walking) or hanging them on the
"wheel" (mechanical hot-walker). Even worse among the gyps, many times these
horses don't even leave the stall. Breezing and work schedules are the most
glaringly different when compared to the past. There is seldom a modern
trainer that will subject their horses to a twice a week training schedule
(a breeze every third day). Most are lucky to be worked once a week, more
like every 10 or so days. There seems to be a fear of "over-training" and
this is translated by modern horsemen into meaning, breezing too often. Not
so, in my eyes or the eyes of the horsemen of the past. As the final
product, you have a horse with deficient preparatory mileage. In short, an
unfit horse that is not capable of coping with the stresses that is often
demanded of it in competition.



I also believe bleeding is not the fault of the shedrow. We are not
producing a horse prone to pulmonary bleeding. I think our modern horses are
being subjected to more environmental stress factors resulting in a low
immune system and lung infections. This is the only thing that seems to make
sense to me. Vets do not appreciate the insidious nature of biofilm lung
infections which cannot be treated by traditional anti-biotics or even be
diagnosed properly.

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PostPosted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:19 pm 
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Joined: Wed May 27, 2015 10:20 am
Posts: 515
The thoroughbred I knew in the 1970s, who I have personally witnessed was a tough horse when trained to be tough. The thoroughbred time trialers at the Red Mile track in Lexington, Ky, I saw back then proved to me that a thoroughbred was every bit as tough as a standardbred, presuming he is conditioned for it. They would go out multiple times in one day an match the top speed of the harness horses in their best lifetime efforts. I would guess the thoroughbreds would go out at least 5-10 times in one day. I guess my view can be countered with the opinion that the 1970s thoroughbred is a much different animal that we have in the 2000s. That our current thoroughbreds are innately weak and this has happened in the last 30 years. Wow, that is some major degeneration for a breed that has been around for hundreds of years!

It is the human condition to view the past through some type of skewed prism as some how better or stronger or more moral than the present day. Have you noticed that? The children we were in our day were much stouter, stronger, more robust ambitious individuals than the current generation of video game playing weaklings. Eh? As far as horses are concerned, the same has always been true, too. The weakness of the thoroughbred has been written about and proclaimed for years, if not centuries.

As long ago as 1835, this was written in THE LITERARY GAZETTE:

Quote:
“We often hear it asserted that the British thoroughbred horse has degenerated within the last few years, and is no longer the stout and long enduring animal that he was in the bygone century (1700s), particularly during the last twenty years of it.




In the 1869, THE SATURDAY REVIEW, it was written that two year old racing was causing the British thoroughbred to degenerate. Also in that issue:

Quote:
"The real truth is--and even careful observers sometimes draw wrong inferences from it--not that we have fewer good horses than our grandfathers, but that we have more bad ones. The number of worthless horses kept in training for a time is legion. We attribute this fact in the majority of cases to the ignorance and avarice of the breeder. Carelessness in the selection of sires and dams, and greediness in filling the pockets with heavy fees at the expense of the strength and vigor of young and promising stallions-these are the reasons why there is so much useless blood-stock in the country, and these are the causes that will, if continued, do more damage to the breed than any amount of two-year-old training and two year-old running."




This was written in 1869! Sound familiar?

An editorial in the WALLACE MONTHLY of 1889 suggested that thoroughbred was degenerating because of the trend of reduced running distances.

Later in 1899, this was written by James Ewart in his book:

Quote:
“As a matter of fact, the English race-horse, compared with even the Arab, is like a hothouse plant that only manages to hold its own when forced and nursed with unusual care, and after all, except for covering very short distances at a great speed, the majority of the hundreds annually bred are of comparatively little use. Breeders flatter themselves that thoroughbreds have since 1689 increased on an average eight or nine inches (from 13"2 to nearly 15"3 hands), but they forget this was partly due to the introduction of Arab blood, and that the size of a horse is very much a question of selection, food, and favorable surroundings, If the increase in size and increase of speed have, as is alleged, been accompanied by a diminution in the staying power and general fitness, the gain can hardly be held to compensate for the loss. That there has been a falling off in the thoroughbred may be inferred from “the smallness of the percentage of even tolerably successful horses out of the prodigious number bred at an enormous outlay."




Written in the year 1900 by John Radcliff in his book, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE:

Quote:
“Horses are very much lighter now; they have neither the bone nor the substance that thoroughbreds had fifty years ago (1850s). I am certain that the constitution of horses of the present day would not stand such work; the modern breed is neither so robust nor so strong. ”




From a THE SPORTING REVIEW in the early 1900s:

Quote:
“Given therefore that, as a special race, the English thoroughbreds of the present day, largely increased in number every year by the all dominating spirit of commercial enterprise, have, for the most part, degenerated from the speed and stamina of their progenitors of the earlier decades of the present century—a postulate that is by no means hypothetical merely, with some of our now few remaining veteran owners of racehorses, among turfites of all denominations, and those of the public who have reminiscences of their performances in the past—then the application to their case of the invigorating re-infusion of the Arab blood, which can alone gradually re-effect that improvement, and which all enlightened hippiasts consider as the solo fountain-head of absolute amelioration for all the Western races, becomes the initiatory step of chiefest import.




Written in 1916 in THE MECHANICS APPLIED TO THE RACEHORSE:

Quote:
“The runner with a relatively long humerus should therefore have a long period of suspension. The length of the arm appears to be diminishing in our present day Thoroughbred.”




More doom and gloom that our thoroughbred’s conformation is degenerating!


From the 1922, Journal of the US Cavalry:

Quote:
“It is consistent to say that the thoroughbred of thirty years ago was an "animal of bone and substance." Yet the son of that noble animal of only thirty years ago, is today, "blemished in hoofs, bowed in tendons," etc. Isn’t this decline rather rapid for one or at most two generations? Have men like Major Dangerfield, Mr. John E. Madden (major breeders of the time) and numerous others worked hard and with marvelous ability for the past "thirty years" and more, to change the thoroughbred from an "animal of bone and substance" to "an animal of racing machine, blemished in hoofs, etc." Isn't it a pity?”




This doom and gloom of the declining thoroughbred race horse has always been with us for well over a hundred years by the soothsayers. It would be all so nice to be able to breed any racehorse that could be stalled a few days of the week, turned out the rest, galloped a day or two, maybe breezed every 2 weeks and never experience a breakdown and yet achieve its ultimate speed on the racecourse. If any of you believe this type of horse can be bred then you better go back to reading fiction as your reality. As a trainer, I know what conditioning can do and it is the only route to strengthening bone, tendon, ligament, lung, and blood for extreme unnatural performances.

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