Vive L'equine!

[erastes]

Which is probably ungrammatical. *Gallic shrug*

Happy Birthday vashtan! May there be dog tags and vests in your day.

I was watching the MEASLY 2 hours of Badminton Horse Trials the BBC patronisingly managed to squish in between wall-to-wall snooker and a Frenchman won it. I wasn't particularly pleased at first (Pah!) but when he reacted after jumping the last fence clear by being so fantastically over-emotional I wept a small tear myself. He was literally SOBBING, his arms flung around his horse's neck, bless him. And the sign of a true horseman when just about the first thing he said was "I am pleased because there were people who didn't believe in this horse and I hope I have proved them wrong."  HUGGLES HIM.

Why the blinkety blink can't the ruddy BBC open a dedicated sports channel or four so we can watch the sports we want to?  What's most annoying is that Badminton is the largest attended event in the world bar the Olympics. over 150,000 spectators turn up for the cross-country day alone, so it's not like, just ME that likes it.  Of course only about six people attend the dressage phase. *g*

gehayi told me about the horse at the Kentucky Derby yesterday, in fact she frightened me to death saying "Did you see what happened?" and I thought that the Martians had landed or something.  It was very sad, but not at all unusual.  Of course, broken limbs are more often seen over fences, but even over the flat it's a disgustingly high statistic. I don't think any horse should be racing at two or three years old. As I told gehayi, in civilian life a horse is never "backed" (given a rider) before it is three, and you'd never consider doing much more athletic with it for a year at least. Baby bones just aren't up to it.

It's one of the reasons that, whilst being a horse-lover and someone who will sit and watch dressage for hours, I don't like horse-racing as a sport. I don't like the people involved, the doping, the cheating the gambling (which perpetuates it all, I guess - after all you don't get rabid gambling on dressage) and the underworld element that it's notorious for.  Whilst I understand the concept of selective breeding it seems to be going to same way that dog breeding did here until the animal welfare associations clamped down on it. They bred cats with short legs for apartment owners (banned), shortened the snouts of bulldogs for "appearance" making them prone to breathing problems and.. well the list goes on.  When it comes to other horse disciplines, there isn't the rapid turnover of breeding for several reasons:  1. A racehorse can be assessed very early on as to whether it's any good and if not, it's glue (the throwaway rate for racehorses is phenomenal and disgusting - which is why you can pick them up for peanuts at sale rooms) 2. A horse in other disciplines has to be a lot older before it's proficient. Any horse can run! Whereas an eventer is generally 8 before it's experienced enough to do well and the amount of time, money and effort needed to get that horse to that position is just huge. Ditto dressage, ditto show jumping. Hell, in England we didn't even HAVE a breeding programme to improve our show jumpers (as the French have had for years) until quite recently. 

There's nothing much I can do about it, I know but often people ask me "you're a horse lover, so why don't you like racing?"  and this is why.

And just randomly, Sean Bean could sell me ANYTHING. His voice sends me into a puddle.

Less randomly: Raider of the Lost Ark on tonight!  WHEEE!!