Extreme Confinement: The majority of active race horses are kept isolated in small stalls 23 hours a day - resulting in extreme solitary confinement. Horses are highly social animals. To understand horses one only needs to understand wild horses. Naturally horses are grazing animals who move and eat constantly. They care very social animals who cherish freedom and family most. One wildlife biologist noted that wild horses have the most sophisticated social structure of any wildlife in North America. 

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Commodification: Treated like products rather than sentient animals, most racehorses are shuffled from owner to owner -- often being bought and sold numerous times during the course of their lives.

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Drugging and Doping: To keep the money flowing, race horses are injected with various drugs – some legal, some not – with a singular goal: to keep them running, even through pain and injury.

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Painful Devices: What happens openly at the track would qualify as animal cruelty if done to our pets. Whips are used because they cause pain. Tongue ties and various bits which can cause suffering and pain are also used in the racing industry. 

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Killing: Horses used for racing prematurely die on the track, in training or in stalls. These deaths are not uncommon. HorseRacingWrongs.org estimates that annually upward of 2,000 horses die while racing or training on American racetracks.

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Slaughtering: Most “retired” American race horses end up at slaughter plants. The racing industry breeds approximately 20,000 foals each year with half of those horses ending up at slaughter (approximately 10,000 thoroughbred horses (the breed used by the racing industry) end up being slaughtered.

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 – modified from information provided by Patrick Battuello, HorseRacingWrongs.org.