Stakes-winning trainer Raul Velarde Vega was issued a summary suspension by stewards in New Mexico on March 24 after a horse he trained was scratched by a veterinarian and became the subject of a warning notice from the El Paso County Animal Welfare Department.
Vega trainee Cause For Love Too, a 3-year-old Quarter Horse filly, had been entered in the second race on March 21 at Sunland Park. According to New Mexico Racing Commission executive director Izzy Trejo, racing officials became concerned when the filly arrived at the paddock.
Photographs of the filly show that she had significant protrusion of ribs and large wounds with areas of raw skin on her hindquarters, on either side of her tail.
Trejo said that after her scratch in the paddock, Cause For Love Too was sent to the test barn, where staff took photographs to document her condition. Due to an ongoing shortage of regulatory veterinarians at Sunland, the filly had not had a pre-race inspection done the morning of the race, so her appearance in the paddock was the first time officials had seen her that day.
“The NMRC then called the New Mexico Livestock Board when the stable gate security told us that the horse left the grounds quickly with the owner of the horse hauling it,” Trejo said via email.
The commission provided the Livestock Board with contact information for Vega and the horse's owner, Erika Aldrete. Livestock Board officials learned the horse had been taken to a property in El Paso, Texas. The El Paso County Animal Welfare Department caught up with the horse and issued a warning to Vega, requiring the horse's owner or custodian to have Cause For Love Too evaluated by a veterinarian within one week.
Trejo said the commission subsequently required the horse to be presented to New Mexico racing officials for out-of-competition testing and examination.
Stewards issued a summary suspension of Vega for conduct detrimental to racing. Vega is scheduled to have a hearing on his summary suspension March 31.
Cause For Love Too has made one other lifetime start, in a Feb. 24 maiden race going 870 yards at Sunland in which she finished eighth of eight, trailing throughout and finishing 14 lengths behind the seventh-place horse.
Vega has trained 91 Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred winners from 847 starters in a career that stared in 2013. Last year was his most prolific season, with 205 Quarter Horse starts and 70 Thoroughbred starts. He is a stakes-winning trainer of Thoroughbreds and a multiple graded stakes-placed trainer with Quarter Horses. Last year, Vega ranked 35th in the nation by earnings for Quarter Horse racing.
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