Horses > People...?

Okay, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to touch on the whole Eight Belles situation at the Kentucky Derby last weekend, but as study after study has opened up on this issue, I just have to say something.

I love horses. I think they are tremendous creatures that are a phenomenon of biology. They are strong, graceful, and have been known to develop good working rapport with humans via the sport of racing.

However, I do think that the coverage of Eight Belles death is a little out of proportion with reality.

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, or seem like I’m judging people from on high. It’s okay to be sorry for a horses death, especially if you saw that at the Kentucky Derby or even on television. That is something that no one wants to see.

But most people did not see that live. Most people either saw a replay of it, or they haven’t seen it at all. And yet these same people are extremely devastated by this and want to explore horse racing and everything related to it because of this incident.

Look, I’m not even going to dive into the issue of how hypocritical it is of society to tell people (and yes, Michael Vick) not to fight dogs but then to go off and race horses. I’ll save that for tomorrow or the next day.

I will however say that I’m quite sad this type of attention isn’t brought to the deaths of children, teenagers and adults dying in the United States and across the world. How horses have become more prevalent figures in society than some humans, is just ridiculous.

I know that people can care about the death of a horse and still care about the death of people at the same time, but you must admit, there are thousands of people who died the same day, in this country alone, and they didn’t get nearly the attention that Eight Belles did.

I’m sorry, but the whole Barbaro thing turned me off. You had people sending flowers, gifs, rich food and the like to a horse they’ve never seen, and yet many of the same people probably didn’t send a dime to a dying child in the same time span.

Come on America, let’s get our priorities straight. Go ahead and look into the death of Eight Belles. Care about the horse’s death and try to prevent it from happening again. But don’t forget about the people out their dying. Don’t make the horse bigger than human life itself. You’ll say I’m taking it to the extreme, but I’m not the one sending thousand-dollar flower arrangements to the graves of horses.

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