For those that are wondering, the sounding of eight bells often signifies the end of a shift or watch.

EIGHT BELLS FOR EIGHT BELLES

OK, I'm getting REALLY annoyed with the segment of the population that has been trying to crucify the entire racing industry after Saturday's Kentucky Derby.  A little reason would be refreshing amidst all of the rampant emotion out there among a group of people who watch one to three races per year and then get on the soapbox and condemn a whole industry.  If you think for one minute that the majority of people in this sport are in it for the money, you should talk to jockeys at some of the “lesser” tracks - Louisiana Downs, Turfway, Indiana Downs, etc. Ask them to show you their W-2s, then come back and post your drivel on the discussion boards at MSN and Yahoo from an informed perspective. Better yet, talk to the grooms and the muckers - many of whom work some tracks just to get to spend time with these wonderful and majestic animals and perhaps get to ride a bit on the guide ponies. They love their animals, plain and simple. Horses and dogs have two things in common - heart and soul. Spend enough time with either and you will see layers deeper than you ever thought possible in a non-human.

I will grant you that the majority of the owners are wealthy, and a good portion of them don’t spend a lot of time with their horses - some of them own too many and race at a multitude of tracks to be able to. Regardless, that doesn’t make them cruel heartless people! They care about their animals and, more importantly, the people they employ to care for the animals truly love them - more than the majority of you who wax so sentimental about the one horse you watched tragically break down in the one race you watch each year.

To say that the jockey knew there was a problem and continued to “whip the horse mercilessly” (an absurd statement as anyone who has ever held a crop will tell you) to win a race is absolutely absurd. All financial incentive aside, it’s suicide! You’re in the final stretch of the Kentucky Derby - a field of 20 horses - and you’re comfortably going to place. Yes, there’s one horse ahead of you but - more important - there are 18 HORSES BEHIND YOU! If you think the horse has a leg problem you pull the horse up and get out of the way! Why? Simple - when 1000 pounds of horse goes down on the track you go down with it! In a field as large as this, if the place horse breaks down in the stretch, your odds of surviving the fall and the trampling that’s certain to come after it are - to put it mildly - not good.

For those out there that bemoan the fact that horses run on “skinny legs”, I hate to tell you that that’s the way God made them. Go to any jockey room or clubhouse at any track in America and look at the pictures of long-ago champions in long-forgotten races and you will see - SURPRISE - thick torsos on skinny legs. Obviously those champions of old aren’t around to measure, but I’d put money on the fact that the diameter of the average horse’s leg hasn’t changed appreciably in the last 134 years.

The bottom line is that this was an accident. Tragic? Certainly. Should we feel sad and mourn her loss? Naturally. However, we should be grateful that the track veterinary staff made the difficult decision to euthanize Eight Belles immediately - to do anything else would have been inhumane. When a horse breaks both legs, the outcome is a foregone conclusion - you cannot save them and any attempt to do so would only have prolonged her agony to make some people feel better about themselves.

Suspend the jockey? Ban the crop? Both absurd - why not just ban the reins too? After all, crop, reins and jockey each exist to control the horse! The bottom line is that PETA needs to find another torch to carry, we need to mourn the loss of a great horse with a great heart and people need to come to terms with the fact that accidents happen and sometimes the outcomes are tragic.