This episode is my opinion on ex racehorses.

While I really do like the ex racers, and they're always very interesting horses to work with, and I understand that there are plenty of ex racers that go onto live fantastic lives outside of racing, many of them just don't unfortunately. Many of them end up in homes that are ill equiped to handling them, not educated enough to understand how deep rooted their understanding of life differs to how the average horse owner keeps their horses, and often times under funded to be able to look into potential health issues they have, or get the consistent professional help in order to improve their beaviour once health issues have been ruled out.

The majority of people who buy ex racers, buy them because they're cheap. While they may well be cheap to purchase initially, owning them and caring for them properly is far from cheap. They're prone to vices that are often either caused by health issues that are ignore because "that's just how some of them are" or they cause health issues which only get noticed when it causes noticiably serious issues, such as colic or ulcers.

Ex racers are stereotypically difficult horses to own and care for, while there are plenty of outliers, its the owners of these outliers that claim these stereotypes as lies. They're not lies, and you telling people your good doer, with good feet, and donkey like personalility is the norm only puts more horses into homes that aren't suitable.

I'm regularly being called out to help with ex racers, and while some owners give their lives and their bank accounts to these animals to do the very best by them, many people will tell me they "just want them to hack out" or "just want them to stop rearing in the school" or insert almost any behaviour into that slot, and when I tell them it's not as simple as just riding them through the naughtiness, more often than not I'm met with "I can't afford" or "I don't want" and unfortunately, when you took on an ex racer, you took on the cost and training time it takes to get these horses right. When purchasing an ex race horse you should be considering these things, and if you don't, you shouldn't have one. It's that simple.