Incoming...

[BH]

Theelin,excuse the misspelling. Thelin didn\'t come on the scene until the mid 00\'s, I believe, long after Alysheba\'s time.

[kekomi]

foaling mares get sloppy for the same reason that pregnant woman do--one of estrogen\'s major roles is to relax the ligaments to allow the birth canal to expand. estrogen is one of the primary reasons women are naturally more flexible as a group than men are; it is also why women have inherently weaker joints than men do and succumb to joint and repetitive strain injuries more quickly and with greater frequency then men do. it is also why with every additional birth a woman becomes more likely to suffer a prolapsed uterus.

the detrimental effect of estrogen on ligaments is well established (you can google it for confirmation if you doubt me). it is a major contributor to ACL injuries in humans.

mares have estrogen because they a female mammals, that doesn\'t mean that it is a safe and reasonable idea to give estrogen to male horses. it doesn\'t even mean that estrogen or any other hormone is particularly beneficial in the long run fot he individual. nature isn\'t concerned with whether something is good for an individual; all it cares about is whether something is good for the species--which means that anything goes as long as it doesn\'t prevent that individual from reproducing before dying, even if death follows immediately after birthing.

easing the discomfort of a pleasure horse is one thing, giving a hormone to an equine athlete who will exert forces on his leg joints that almost no other athlete of any species ever will, who depends on his ligaments to keep from breaking down under those forces, is not excusable in my book. whether alysheba raced on it or not is beside the point; alysheba also raced on lasix, which is also inexcusable to me.

many practices in horse racing are accepted blindly because they\'ve been done since way back when...if humans applied the same logic to ourselves, we\'d all still be dying of cholera in the 100s of thousands in every major city in the world from drinking $h!t filled water, while inoculating ourselves with poseys to keep away the bad air, which everyone knows causes cholera, because that is what we\'ve always done and what we\'ve always believed (the man who first proposed that cholera was caused by drinking water from the themes contaminated with $h!t was ridiculed by the royal academy of sciences as quack and a fool).

the practice of vets giving horses a lot of off lable human medicines is disturbingly accepted without batting an eye--but here\'s something to consider, nothing in horse racing rivals the sophistication of doping in human sports--if lasix and estrogen where good ideas, they\'d be being used in human doping (testosterone is one of the mostly widely abused substances in human sports, even among female gymnasts, whom you\'d think would actually prefer to increase their flexibility with extra estrogen, over risking  growing a beard from testosterone--that they\'re not speaks volumes). human dopers don\'t worry about whether a substance might kill them, but they won\'t risk loosing their knees. death is preferable to retirement from injury...

one of the key points in the article linked to is that vets aren\'t concerned with the well-being of these animals at all, they are concerned with padding their wallets and keep their customers happy.

i know that TGJB and most on this site probably care more about the hit to bettors that all these substances cause--and you should be--note that rich \"bettors\" have enacted a whole scheme of criminal laws for failing to disclose information that might have influenced their \"bets.\" i care about that too, but i figure that since even when gambling is highly regulated and on the level, the house is still going win most of the time anyway...so for me the bigger issue is that if we\'re going to conscript these animals to run in circles for our pleasure, we owe them a fiduciary duty to make it as safe for them as possible...

sorry for the long post...

[razzle]

I fear it may all fall victim to Mendel\'s Defacatory Principle.
http://dailyoddsandends.wordpress.com/2013/06/25/mendels-defecatory-principle/

[catcapper]

Raz,  

Levity keeps us all in a good place while being seriously real at the same time. The humor on this board has taken me down laughing more than once.

You must read a  very old play by a dude named Aristophenes, it is called The Clouds.
After 2500 years, toilet humor still rules!!!

[dcbred1]

I remember reading that in high school and seeing it performed in Olney, Md. Still a great play.

[razzle]

Well said.  Interesting comments about the \"knees\" of human athletes and the comparative risk tolerance.