Paul's Ponderings - May 8, 2008

If you are one of the millions of people who watched the Kentucky Derby on television Saturday, you saw a race that was won by a potentially great horse, Big Brown, and an extremely gusty effort by a filly, Eight Belles, who, after finishing second against the boys, suffered two broken front legs while slowing down after crossing the finishing line and had to be put down on the track. It was a tragic ending to a fine race, and it still gives me cold chills when I watch a replay of what happened. (Even though we were spared from seeing the filly euthanized, you knew what was going on.)
Since the tragedy happened in the Kentucky Derby, the world’s most popular horse race, the event was seen by many people who won’t see another horse race this year, and it has cast a bad light on horse racing in general for a lot of people. And, while I feel bad about the filly having to be put down, having been a horse racing fan for most of my life, I can understand that what happened to her was a ‘freak’ accident.
Every day, there are thousands of horses being raced across the country, and around the world, and just like in any sport, you’re going to have injuries occur, some fatal like Saturday’s. Race car drivers wreck all the time and are seriously injured or killed; basketball players collapse and die on the court because of a heart condition; football players are frequently injured, sometimes seriously (how many football games – pro or college – have you watched that at least one player hasn’t been carried or helped off the field after being hurt?); a minor league baseball coach was killed last year when he was struck in the head by a foul ball; the list could go on and on.  But, you don’t hear a lot of outrage about these injuries and calls for banning these sports. (And, people tend to forget about the 99-plus percent of horses that race, come out just fine and go on to race again and again.)
Yet, here comes PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) representatives screaming about Saturday’s incident. They want Eight Belles’jockey, Gabriel Saez, prosecuted for cruelty to animals for using his whip on the filly down the stretch. They want races to be run only on artificial surfaces, they want horses not to be raced until they’re at least three years old. They want a lot of other stupid things too. Sometimes, I wonder what planet a lot of the PETA people came from.
The is the same organization that sends their members out in the fields to disrupt hunters (a few even showed up on Pike’s Ridge in Taylor County a few years ago to try to disrupt the deer hunt on opening day, although I don’t think they had much success), that want to ban recreational fishing because it causes fish trauma, the group that says dairy cows should have mattresses in their barns. One PETA group even wanted to ban a cow patty bingo fundraiser being held by one high school because they said the participating cows “would be humiliated.”
PETA has also been the main opposition to the use of lab rats and mice being used to further medical research for cures for diseases that kill thousands and thousands of people each year. The list of outrageous PETA demands go on and on (if you want to read a whole lot more, just type in Opposition to PETA on Google search, and page after page will appear).
Personally, I am opposed to animal cruelty, and agree with PETA on a few things, such as better treatment for animals being raised on “factory farms.” But, I also think I have a little bit of common sense. What are lab rats bred for except to be used in research?
And, while PETA might try to project an image that is pro-life for all animals, here’s a little tidbit I discovered that was a little surprising. At its headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, PETA maintains a large animal “shelter.”Between 1998 and 2007, PETA killed over 19,000 dogs, cats, puppies, kittens and other “companion” animals that were in its care. In the past five years, over 90 percent of the animals the organization took in were killed, and less than one percent were adopted. On the other hand, humane societies in that part of Virginia were able to save and adopt out over 85 percent of the animals they took in.
The heck with dogs and cats, save a lab rat!