In the end, you just want to give the horse a hug

"I don't care to see horse racing. It just doesn't interest me. I wouldn't go across the street to watch a race." So said Dr. Don Dooley, official veterinarian for the California Horse Racing Board.

"The thoroughbred is born to commit suicide." So said Greg Gilchrist, well-respected Northern California horse trainer for 30 years.

It was those kind of statements that gave me a knot in my stomach, the knot made all the more tense because Dooley and Gilchrist are professed horse lovers, protectors, not a beastly moment in them when it comes to the noble animal.

The point was never more obvious when I asked Dooley how many times he has had to put a race horse down on the track after suffering a catastrophic injury.

"Many times, many times," said the vet, 67.

How many? "Many times, many times," he repeated.

And Gilchrist? "I don't know," said the trainer, 60.

How many? "I don't know," he repeated.

Gilchrist knew, Dooley, too, if they took the time and went over race by race. But why relive it or place a name on the wall? Sure, to cheapen their statements, one could say they didn't suffer near as much pain as the horses that were euthanatized.

Quite true. But that would obscure the larger issue.

How could two men who love horses take part in an industry the first man chooses not to watch and the second man knows a horse is just a commodity to be bought, sold, discarded or worse (and your imagination doesn't need to travel very far to consider the meaning of that word)?

For both Dooley and Gilchrist, both of whom will work their jobs at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds racing this summer, their first answer is to protect the animal from the industry environment, to keep them healthy. After that they go off in separate directions.

"Let's say you want to buy a saddle horse for your kid," Dooley said. "Where does that horse come from? The horse racing industry. If there was no horse racing in this country, they'd be no horses. The horse population in America would go from what we have now, two million, down to 20,000.

"Sixty to eighty percent of the foal population born in this country every year never make it as race horses. Either they aren't fast enough or have the heart or whatever. Where do these horses go? They have to go somewhere." Like Reagan's trickle-down theory of economics except it's applied to horses? "Exactly," Dooley said.

They become saddle horses or farm horses or pleasure horses. They go to families or corporations or dude ranches or whatever (those that aren't slaughtered, of course). Of course the average person could go out and just buy the first foal they see.

"The cost to the average person for that," Dooley said, "would be $3,000-4,000 first to buy a horse. Then you have to board it, feed it, train it."

For about two years, until the animal is strong enough and has been trained. The average person doesn't have that kind of money, or at least the kind of average person who is writing this column. By the time a race horse is three years old, its future has been well-decided upon, his career scoped and measured and for the horse owner/investor, given very little room for error.

So Dooley is there, least in California, to make sure the horse, least the one running in races, is treated in a proper and humane manner.

Gilchrist? He's in it because he sees himself as a small little circle, one example of how to treat the animal, and a voice crying out for change in an industry that desperately needs it.

"Half the problems we have with horses right now could be eliminated," said Gilchrist, "if we would just cut down the racing calendar from 12 months to, say, eight months. That would give the horses the rest they need. Drugs wouldn't be necessary to keep them going. But if you raise your hand at a horse board meeting and ask to talk about reducing the racing dates, they will tell you to sit down and they'll talk about it with you later.

"And later would never come."

So how is a thoroughbred bred for suicide? "Unless it's a top stallion or a well-bred mare," Gilchrist said, "the horse could fall into bad hands and when that happens there's no telling where the horse might end up." Interpretation: Slaughter.

Whether the failed race horse falls to a family or to a place unfit to describe in a newspaper, the journey of any animal in this industry is determined by the cash flow he or she initiates.

That's why it is so easy, after Eight Belles was euthanized Saturday after the Kentucky Derby, to say a pox on their house. Horse racing is not a sport of kings. It's not even a sport. It's cash flow.

"There aren't horses out there," Gilchrist said. "They're pawns. Whenever you get corporations involved -- and Churchill Downs and Magna (Entertainment) own most of the tracks in this country -- it's the bottom line. And greed takes over."

When the stud fees can reach $100,000, as it has for Smarty Jones, the 2004 Derby and Preakness winner, a horse can make $11 million a year, as Smarty Jones has. With that kind of money out as the gold pot at the end of the rainbow, when yearlings go for a half million bucks, all the good intentions of a Don Dooley or a Greg Gilchrist can easily be overrun.

Dooley and Gilchrist, try as they may, can protect the horses as much as they can.

But who protects the breeders, the owners of both race horse and hope-to-have-a-champion mares?

Who protects them from lust? They can't. So when Eight Belles goes down, and the industry shrugs and says that's the price of doing business, why should it be a surprise when no one gives it much sympathy.

Yes, it's terrific America's horse population remains high and that the good doc is on the scene and the good trainer is there, too.

But like the old adage, one picture is worth a thousand words and so when there's the picture of Eight Belles on the ground, euthanized, that says more about the industry than all the well-meaning vets and trainers ever could.

Because, well, it's hard to feel sad when a multi-millionaire owner just lost out on a big payday. You want to give a hug all right but it isn't to the man. It's to the animal.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com