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Originally Posted by cmorioles
I kind of think there is something to this. Do we want to force owners out of the game because they can't afford a chemical edge? We are probably there already.
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There may be a bit of truth to this but not in the way West describes. A trainer friend of mine who has a medium sized stable (30 horses) got 3 horses from a owner who had the horses with a big name trainer. He asked the owner to send him the last few vet bills for the horse to see what they had been doing with the horses so he had a little bit of a history. Each horse had between a $1200 and $2000 per month vet bill. This is on horses that were not winning or even running well. There wasnt anything unusual but these horses are getting every possible thing that can be given. A large portion of the bill was gastrogard but they were getting clembuterol, adequan, lubrysn, etc. It obviously wasnt doing much for these three but they werent really any good for my friend either at lower level tracks. I guess the point of the story is that the big trainers are casting a wide net in terms of doing everything possible to keep their horses healthy at a high cost which their owners seem to be willing to pay. In some cases it may be an advantage simply because some of those things may help an individual horse to compete at it's highest level though much may simply be overkill. But there are very few owners that can afford a $2000 a month vet bill especially on horses not earning.