What would you change?

[Dunbar]

Originally Posted by oracle80

Breeding is free market and trade enterprise and its so completely unrealistic to think that courts would uphold such an edict. It would be laughed out on the first challenge. You can't tell people what to do with their property. I understand the sentiment, but what would you suggest a guy with a horse who has been injured do if the hores has been injured at age two or three?

If what you say is true about the courts, then the artificial insemination ban would not have held up. Why not grab a bunch of Sunday Silence sperm and have another 100 years of Sunday Silence offspring? Wasn't that their property, too?

There are already regulations about what kind of horse can race in a thoroughbred race. Restricting it further to horses that are the offspring of 5-yr-old or older stallions isn't a huge leap of imagination.

As far as your last question, I already addressed that. An injured horse that has value as a breeding prospect can live happily for a year or 2 without being bred. Yes, the owners will have to wait a bit to collect the breeding dividend, and the dividend may be a little smaller with 1-2 years taken out of the breeding lifetime.

I agree with you that it is extremely unlikely we'll ever see this change take place. But it won't be the courts that stop it. It will be shortsightedness and fragmentation in the industry.

--Dunbar