Following the dust stirred up by PETA and the national outrage about the very public death of Eight Belles from two snapped ankle bones, our appeals to the horseracing industry to make far-reaching changes in its practices have begun to have a noticeable effect. An article in The Wall Street Journal today quoted Alex Waldrop, the president of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) as saying, "It is clear that the status quo is not an option. We have to stop identifying problems and start implementing solutions."

Which, well, Amen to that. Some changes have already begun to be implemented, including a prominent horse auction company which has “instructed agents and breeders to discourage jockeys from whipping horses during a coming sales show,” citing the negative press generated by animal rights organizations as its reason for implementing the policy. What goes on behind the scenes, from whipping to doping, is another matter. Time will tell if major changes are adopted by the NTRA, and how effective and far-reaching they are, but the grave concerns about the long list of cruel and shady practices of this dirty industry—which PETA has been raising for decades—are finally beginning to be addressed.

It’s certainly too bad that it took another death of a popular horse during a televised racing event to scare the industry into recognizing that people are leaving the track in droves, but we’ll call this “better late than never” and keep our eyes firmly on the industry to ensure that these promises are more than just talk.

Following the shocking death of the horse that Senator Hillary Clinton publicly bet on in the Kentucky Derby, PETA has asked her to denounce this dirty “sport.”

In a letter to the Senator today, PETA’s president pointed out that Eight Belles was fiercely whipped in the final stretch just before the bone in her ankles broke through her skin and she crashed to the ground. Given that the joints of the young horses used in these races are not yet fully formed, this kind of accident is inevitable, and the expressions of surprise about this incident from within the horseracing industry are utterly fake. In her letter to the Senator—which points out that Eight Belles is just one out of a long list of horses who have broken their legs and had to be killed throughout the history of the Triple Crown and the hundreds more who die every year in the horseracing industry—PETA’s president writes:

“Attending the Derby is as despicable as attending a dogfight. For most—not a few—of the horses you see will not end up put out to pasture on a beautiful ranch but will be sent overseas to be slaughtered for someone's dinner plate. At some point, all horses stop winning.”

The letter asks Clinton to withdraw her public support of horseracing, and condemn the cruel “sport” instead.

I should point out here that PETA is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to stopping the exploitation and abuse of animals. PETA's condemnation of Hillary Clinton for betting on horses and its request that she denounce horseracing are in no way intended as intervention in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for political office.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Senator Clinton:

As a high profile political figure with the esteem of many women, I regret to say that your public support of horseracing—and specifically betting on Eight Belles—makes you culpable in her destruction. I ask you now to publicly condemn races like the Kentucky Derby. Eight Belles ran for her life and was fiercely whipped as she came down that final stretch when she was no doubt in a great deal of pain. We cannot call ourselves a civilized nation if we allow any living being to endure such abuse.

Races like this are the equivalent of child sweatshops. These are not even seasoned horses: They are young fillies and colts whose joints are not formed enough to endure such a grueling race. Despite this, they are pushed beyond their limits. The Triple Crown and other major horse races have become the graveyards of too many horses who were called champions. For example, Go For Wand, who went down in the 1990 Breeders' Cup Distaff and then stumbled up and tried to keep running with her broken leg dangling; Union City, who fractured a leg in the 1993 Preakness and was destroyed; Prairie Bayou, who that same year suffered a compound fracture in the Belmont Stakes and had to be destroyed; George Washington, who was euthanized after breaking his leg while running the Preakness last year; and of course Barbaro, the "poster horse" of the racing industry's failures and excesses, who despite efforts could not be saved from the injuries sustained during the 2006 Preakness. Barbaro's injuries were terrible—fractures of his canon bone, sesamoids, and long pastern as well as the dislocation of the fetlock joint. These are just a few of the horses we hear about—they are the winners, the horses who run the big races. Hundreds of horses meet the same painful, deadly fate every year in the horseracing industry. A race track is not a place for a fun day out, and we are writing to Chelsea on that score. Attending the Derby is as despicable as attending a dogfight. For most—not a few—of the horses you see will not end up put out to pasture on a beautiful ranch but will be sent overseas to be slaughtered for someone's dinner plate. At some point, all horses stop winning.

PETA takes no position on whether you win or lose the race you are in, but we call on you to publicly reject betting on such hideous spectacles of domination over wonderful animals who deserve more than pain and death for human profit and amusement.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

With the shock of Barbaro's death after the 2006 Preakness still fresh in their minds, the Kentucky Derby crowd saw for themselves the sordid truth about what racing means for the horses involved last night, as the filly Eight Belles was killed after collapsing on the track.

This young filly's death may have been humane, but the race sure wasn't. PETA is calling for the immediate suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez—who whipped Eight Belles mercilessly as she came down the final stretch, no doubt in agony from two front legs that were about to snap.

While the trainers, jockeys, and owners may weep their crocodile tears today over Eight Belles' euthanasia, they will be back on the track tomorrow, putting other horses at risk. Thoroughbreds are raced on hard dirt surfaces—like the one at Churchill Downs. Their bones simply can't take it, as Eight Belles' two broken front legs showed last night. Despite the wealth associated with thoroughbred racing, for the horses—most of whom end up broken, cast off, or sent to Europe to be killed for the dinner table—it's a dirty business and no better than dogfighting.

Well, Rudy Giuliani’s office hung up on us when we offered the once presidential hopeful an ambassadorship last week, but Omar Osama Bin Laden (the estranged son of the more notorious OBL) and his wife are talking to us. We sent a letter yesterday urging the bin Ladens to cancel plans to organize a “grueling” endurance horse race across the Sahara Desert as “a way to promote peace.” That’s a 3,000-mile horse race across North Africa, scheduled to begin in March. We didn’t think that sounded like a barrel of laughs for the horses. As PETA’s president puts it, "If this were a rally in which cars were in danger of overheating and breaking down, I'd be all for it. But horses are flesh and blood. Such a grueling race will mean fatalities, not peace. Animals have not declared war on us - they should be truly left in peace."

The bin Ladens got back right away and some important assurances have already been given. More on this later. You can read our letter to bin Laden here.

If you’ve checked the front page of PETA’s site lately, you’ll know that our good friend Pink has stepped up in a big way for horses who are victimized by the carriage horse industry in New York by creating a petition against the cruel business and starring in a billboard to help educate people about the horrors that go on behind the scenes in that industry.

Anyone who works in advertising will know that getting a billboard placed can be a tricky business sometimes—some billboards end up on the side of a dirt road in, like, Pottawattamie, Iowa, and some just never see the light of day at all. So these shots of Pink’s beautiful new ad in Times Square, New York, are nothing short of glorious. Check 'em out (then sign Pink’s petition here).

So, after years of hard work by animal protection advocates exposing the extreme cruelty involved in these operations, some of the last horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. were shut down. But the folks in the horse-racing and horse-carriage industries still need to do something with the thousands of horses who are rendered useless to them every year due to old age or outright abuse. So they’ve been sending these animals across the border to Mexico, which has even more lax regulations for its slaughterhouses than the abysmal standards in the U.S.—and the results are positively gruesome.

The good news is that there’s a bill on the table that would ban the export of horses to foreign slaughterhouses called the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, and we’re pushing hard right now to help get it passed. You can click here to learn more about the act and write to your Representatives through our online form to ask that they support the new bill to protect horses.

Like most serious Redskins fans, I have sworn a solemn oath never to say something nice about a Dallas Cowboy, which—as you can imagine—makes this extremely difficult for me. But the unavoidable fact of the matter is that PETA is giving a much-deserved award to Leonard Davis, a Cowboys offensive lineman who went out of his way to rescue a stranded horse when he discovered the animal stuck belly-deep in mud near his home. Evidently, our heroic horse-rescuer noticed that the horse, Ranger, was stuck in a sinkhole across the street, rushed to fasten straps around the animal, then used his John Deere tractor to pull him free from the mud. Davis then hosed Ranger down, as neighbors and emergency responders looked on. To thank him for going above and beyond to save Ranger's life, PETA has given the Cowboys guard its “Compassionate Action” Award, along with a gift basket and a letter of appreciation. Leonard Davis, you're a badass. And now, just because I feel like it, here's a picture of LaVar Arrington ending Troy Aikman's career.

When I walked by my boss Ingrid’s office this morning and heard “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” blaring, I knew something fishy was going on . . .

Well, toss your cowboy hat in the air, crank up “On The Road Again” and holler yee haw! Willie Nelson (Yes, THE Willie Nelson) and his daughter have been trying to close horse slaughterhouses in Texas for many years, and today their efforts and the efforts of everyone who was fighting right alongside them won out! The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the old law on the Texas books prohibiting the operation of these hideous places is valid—meaning that the two remaining horse slaughterhouse in the state have to close! The only other option the horse butchers have is to try their luck in the Supreme Court, but I really don’t see that happening.

To celebrate, I’m throwing a huge party this weekend, and I just bought “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” to start getting pumped up for the big event.

I just love that Willie and his family have worked so hard to help horses. Thank you, guys!