Horse 'suicide' race.

[idgiehkt]

This kind of thing just burns me up. IDA is asking people to write in protest of it. I will be so glad when people don't use animals as human rites of passage, I'm so sick of it.

"The Suicide Race takes place over the course of four days and nights. Riders begin by careening their horses down Suicide Hill, a 210-foot plunge at a 62 degree angle (which is close to a vertical 45 degree angle). The horses then confront the narrow entrance of the Okanogan River at breakneck speed, often getting caught in bottlenecks and crashing into one another. Those horses who make it into the river must swim over 100 yards and make a final desperate sprint up a 500 foot hill to the finish line.

Many of the horses used in the Suicide Race suffer heart attacks from overexertion, broken bones from collisions and even death by drowning. In the 2004 race, three horses died in the first heat alone. Many more horses also die later from racing injuries or during practice runs, but these fatalities are not documented or calculated."


http://idausa.org/campaigns/sport/rodeo/alert.html