***DESPERATE HORSEPEOPLE*** and their Dirty Little Secrets!

[TrueColours]

You know - nothing should surprise us any more, but it seems like every week or so SOMETHING comes up that really makes you shake your head when you deal with barn owners, feed mill owners, trainers, etc
NO specifics, so hopefully this thread can stay alive and not get shut down because names are named, but a few real dilly's come to mind ...

1) one large boarding barn I was at many years ago would dutifully ask you when you moved in what your horse had been fed. A few days or a week later, they would then re-approach you and say "You know - I noticed that Fluffy is cleaning up ALL of his hay rather quickly and still isnt putting as much weight on as I would like to see, do you mind if I INCREASE his grain and hay a bit?"
Well - of course you think they are the best barn manager in the whole wide world ... BUT ... the REAL truth and the "DLS" (dirty little secret) that is lurking in the background is that they SAY this to you, but in the meantime they have CUT your horse's grain and hay as they get a bonus from the owner if they can lower monthly operating costs each month ...

2) feed mill practices ... WHO is going to notice if instead of getting exactly 100 lbs of grain in your 100 lb bag, you actually get only 99 lbs ...
NOT a big deal, right, but multiply that times the hundreds if not thousands of bags that go out of there each month and it adds up to big bucks and BIG savings for the feed mill owner!
You dont mind if its an accidental oversight the odd time, but intentionally every single time??? That grates the wrong way ...

3) instead of giving your horse their full grain rations, you come up unannounced at a different time than usual and find a bunch of bread mixed in with their feed!
The BO SAYS that its a "special treat" for them, but how come EVERY horse in the barn has these "special treats" in their feed bins and less grain than they are supposed to be getting?!

4) I had a horse in training at the track many years ago.

The trainer was, and still is, a REAL scumbag ... (but - he WAS a good trainer - its was his ethical and people skills that needed the work ... )

He was also best friends with the vet that he used for all of his work and they golfed together once or twice a week as well as headed out for beers after work ...

I worked about 5 minutes from the track, so every morning, I'd go and watch my guy work and then take him out and hand graze him until I had to leave to go into the office. Every morning - I maybe missed one morning a month and that was it.

The trainer was pushing me and pushing me to put him on Lasix and I kept saying "no". Show me him bleeding from the nostrils and I will agree to it. Until that day comes - *NO*

Well - lo and behold - the *ONE* day I didnt make it out he bled "profusely" from the nostrils, he got his vet buddy to scope him to confirm he had bleeding and they slapped him on the Lasix list.
I was furious - not only did he not need it, but it was extra cost to me, plus it dehydrates them terribly and he was a horse that had a lot of trouble maintaining weight anyhow ...

But the best scam of all, when I yanked him out of there and opted to go with another trainer, I get a bill from the buddy vet for about $3000.00 in charges for that month ...

Ankles, hocks and knees injected - pretty well every joint he had was injected with "something" (yeah right - I dont THINK so ...)
But the best one of all were the 1-2 BOTTLES of Ventopulmin that were billed to my account each and every week.
Ventopulmin is a bronchiodilator, used for horses with breathing problems (which my guy DEFINATELY did not have!) and even if he did, one bottle should have lasted him a month and he sure as heck would not have gone through 6-8 of them!
Well - once the feds made Winstrol and Equipoise VERY difficult to obtain (it is the steroid of choice for runners (human) and body builders and was the one Ben Johnson was on when he got nailed in the Olympics) the next concoction of choice was - you guessed it - Ventopulmin because of the steroids contained in it. For the $75.00 bottle of Ventopulmin that you could get from your vet, you could EASILY get over $1000.00 for it at any body building gym ...

So - I informed Mr Scummy Trainer and equally scummy Vet that he had the choice of ripping up my ridiculous $3000.00 vet bill, or the next call I made was going to be to the RCMP to have his Ventopulmin practices investigate fully ...

Funny thing - I never heard from either one of them again ...

I'm sure there are some REAL interesting ones out there!

Enlighten us all. What "DLS's" have you come across out there?!

[louis finochio]

I have heard through the grapevine many stories about individuals that are theives.

This farrier shoed 25 TB for this trainer and the trainer didnt pay his bill.
The farrier went back after dark and took all the shoes off those 25 TB and when the trainer came back the next morn he was mad as hell.

Some of these trainers do as you posted pad the feed and vet bills.

There are also trainers of individuals that will steal feed after dark, the best way to stop that is to have a dog guard the feed.

I have heard many other stories some of which I cant post, as they are bad for the industry.

When you enter any business you must use references to separate the good and honest people from the dishonest.

[Intrinsic Worth]

How about trainers making trips to Canada to get drugs to use on their horses that they can't get in the US. One trainer here in MI found out some other trainers were driving to Canada to get some drugs (that he himself gets but doesn't want the competition to have) and he called the border patrol to stop them. The trainers got so mad that they busted into his tack room one night and stole all his medication and some tack.

[Crystal]

HOW ABOUT BEING CHARGED UP THE BUTT FOR SUPPLEMENTS.. THAT GO OUT TO ALL THE TRAINERS HORSES. AS WELL AS ANY SPECIAL GRAIN OR HAY... IT FUMES ME

[haleymg]

How bout this one . I know of a trainer that will have a horse claimed off him , and the owner claims the horse back the next week , and the trainer bills the owner for all new equipment. Did the equipment go missing in the last week or two ?

[aurora]

Sorry, Haleymg.

I didn't understand the part about the equipment, what equipement would the trainer be charging the owner for?

[madelyn]

hmmm... how about an interesting story about an insurance claim?

Homeowner with normal homeowner's insurance resides in Central Kentucky and has two mares on his own property, a 21 yr old mare and a 2 yr old filly of indeterminate breed. His property happens to border a blackboard fenced Thoroughbred breeding farm. The kind with the great big spaces between the fences. Homeowner's 2 mares somehow get on the neighbor's property and end up in the gap between two paddocks. Coincidentally, FOUR DAYS LATER!!!, the breeding farm's 18 yr old mare whose offspring have never even made back the stud fee at the sales, aborts her foal (in foal to Arch, $10K Stand and Nurse, due when foal is born). Farm claims that the presence of the two mares outside her paddock for a little while upset her and she lost her foal.... and DOES NOT AUTOPSY THE DEAD FOAL. Farm sues homeowner's insurance... and gets one of those hotshot bloodstock dudes with a resume as long as your arm, but no related education or certification, to write up that the foal was worth at least $75K AS A YEARLING... and then pesters the insurance company as to why they just don't pay it...

What is the bloodstock agent's cut here? 20%? 50%??

Anyhow, the insurance company has no horse adjusters because they don't insure farms or livestock... but end up with a possible PRESENT VALUE of the foal of $7500 tops.... BOY WERE THE FARM AND THE AGENT PISSED OFF.....

There is more than one kind of crook in this business.

[summerhorse]

The old we feed so much feed and you pay extra for more and as the winter goes by your horses gets skinnier and skinnier pretty much cured me of EVER boarding a horse again. Funny when I fed them it didn't take much at all to keep them normal. Wonder what the difference was?

Hopefully DNA tests have and/or will put this old one to rest, the grand old collecting of papers by horse dealers. Got a nice looking horse with no ID no problem, he should have some papers to match. Not only does this make pretty much every breed's real lineage pretty much taken witha shaker of salt it was a grand way to get rid of those Am. saddlebreds that weren't quite ready for the 5-Gaited classes but did really well as Tennessee Walkers (ever wonder how those JUGheads went from UGLY to pretty (relative term) in less than 20 years?) Or how those convex and straight face foundation QHs got those pretty little Arab heads suddenly (out of nowhere?) or why racing Arabs suddenly got faster AND lost type at the same time and started to look suspiciously like Anglo-Arabs (I think some of these are still running). It also helps account for a lot of those "crop outs" from Qhs of Appy and Paint babies. A lot of those mares and stallions were often minimal Apps or pintos or carrying the genes but hiding them, just needing some more to "crop out". Of course there is still a ton of those pinto genes in the Qh now but still a few of the LP carrying ones also. I remember being so SHOCKED when I was a teenager and a dealer showed me his paper stash. And told me why people would be selling horses with no papers (always thought what the hell good is a piece of paper if you don't have the horse?) Well the horse wasn't good enough so they just saved that piece of paper for another one that looked better but didn't have the right ID.

Too bad horses breed more to their bloodline than their looks!

Of course in the very old days (think Justin Morgan here) people would just pass pedigrees word of mouth or by memory ( HA!) or just make them up if they had a nice horse! So pretty much most pedigrees before DNA are somewhat in question in some generation or other.

[haleymg]

By equipment : I mean Bridles , shadow rolls, blinker, head poles etc. I am the gf a harness guy , so other stuff this guy charged for from what I hear is . harnesses ( which are not cheap ). I used to work on the track with tb's and the sb's ( harness).

[Contrast]

A well-known jockey had a good relationship with a trainer who had given him some stakes winners. This jockey worked with another (well known) trainer to claim trainer #1's promising 3 year old from him and kept the mount with the trainer who claimed him. They went on to win a few stakes with the horse.

[Maureen]

How bout this one . I know of a trainer that will have a horse claimed off him , and the owner claims the horse back the next week , and the trainer bills the owner for all new equipment. Did the equipment go missing in the last week or two ?

Is this a standarbred thing? I've never heard of anyone charging for equipment in TB racing. The trainers own all their own equipment and the owners don't have to buy any (at least that's the way mine is).

[ohdannyboy]

the dirty little secret is that the first and second place trainers in this years classic are both appealing cocaine positve suspensions from nyra handed down earlier in the year.

[haleymg]

Depends on the trainer . My guy likes to have most equipment. Some stuff is bought for that horse only. Hobbles( those things that keep the horse pacing are a good example). They can be adjusted , but very rarely does every horse in the barn have the same length , or some are light , some are heavy. Could you imagine having to change the length of those things every time before a race . Plus add to the fact standardbreds are in the paddock about 3 races before they race. From what I remember we used to interchange stuff for the tb's i used . Also that is was quite easy to do .