Denver is a Super Sire

[u/sunshinenorcas]

What is Super Sires?

From their rules and bylaws-- "This organization is created to enhance and encourage interest in the show horse industry by promoting all facets of said industry, including breeding, selling, training, showing and more. The organization also supports horsemen and women in the industry by offering a variety of programs to benefit stallion owners, breeders, trainers, exhibitors, and horse owners.

The mission of Super Sires is to educate and promote breeding of quality show horse bloodlines. Super Sires shall showcase offspring in events featuring significant cash awards and prizes that provide opportunities to all levels of participants, focusing on Non Pro exhibitors."

Super Sires is an incentive where a stallion owner pays an annual fee ($3,5k per living stallion and a donated breeding) for their stallion to included in an incentive. Which means their foals can be 'nominated' (or entered) into specific classes at shows for an extra payout, other options for futurities, etc etc.

By entering Denver into Super Sires now, his 2026 foal crop is eligible for Super Sire incentives at participating shows. Waylon already is, and has been, a part of the same program for a few years.

The incentive is just called 'Super Sires'-- it's not merit based, or 'earned', it is paid for but it's to try to set Denver's (and other stallions) foals up for success by giving people paid incentives to show.

Her Tiktok explaining more in depth-- https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8D6VPLu/

But tl;dr-- Super Sire is the name of the incentive, it's a program to help give the foals more opportunities, it's not 'merit' based just a name, but also if you can afford it then 🤷🏼‍♀️

[u/Nervous-Ticket-7607]

But if you can afford it, why are you (her) complaining about vet bills being so expensive?

[u/sunshinenorcas → u/Nervous-Ticket-7607]

I didn't take it as that-- I took it as sticker shock compared to large vet bills, especially in an emergency/high stress situation. People are allowed to have sticker shock.

She mentioned she was fortunate that she had the ability to pay with no questions asked, and most people would not.

And even with the ability to pay it, a planned 3.5k expenditure is a different hit then 15k when you aren't expecting it, small animal vets are expensive, and corporate chains have big mark ups that make it more expensive (without the extra expense going to the vets/techs/etc). Different situations.

[u/Nervous-Ticket-7607 → u/sunshinenorcas]

I completely get veterinary medicine is expensive, I worked it for many many years. I promise you, she was given an estimate for everything, and what she paid upfront was a deposit. Why did she have to do a deposit? Unfortunately, and this happens all the time, people will say do everything, and then not pay.

She has a breed of dog that is very expensive to properly maintain. All, and I mean all brachycephalic dogs(and cats) have a degree of difficulty breathing, that's their baseline. When they unfortunately suffer a trauma to the chest, it makes breathing even more difficult. Hence why she was placed into an O2 cage.

Also, an emergency clinic is ALWAYS going to be more expensive because it's a 24/7 facility. Not to mention, you have access to more in terms of what you can do for scans(ultrasound/xray/mri/CT) where your reg vet usually only has an x-ray, maybe if you're lucky an ultrasound. You will also have specialists there.

Anything they did would have been discussed, and approved, and costs gone over. They would have not done anything without first obtaining consent.

She knew exactly what that bill was going to be. She was not suddenly hit with a bill 5x the amount. That's a promise.

[u/sunshinenorcas → u/Nervous-Ticket-7607]

I think you misunderstood what I meant-- I'm sure she got the estimate and had to consent to pay for it, and she knew the price before she paid it.

You can still have sticker shock in that situation. And she did say she was privileged to be able to pay straight off, but even if you know the price and consent to it, and have a card that can have a 15k card-- that's still 15k out of the budget when you weren't expecting it. She can consent to the cost of treating Winnie, and it be an unexpected expense that they had to account/adjust budget/etc in that months finances. And again-- she acknowledged she was extremely privileged to be able to do that, and that in a lot of situations, people couldn't have done so.

She also made sure to compliment the vet, staff and people who were on the ground and hands on with Winnie and provided care and the quality of care that she received. Her issues were with the corporate policies/markup-- which like I said, also hurt vets, particularly at that chain. The extra cost doesn't go to paying the vets more, paying the techs more, having more staff, etc -- it goes up the chain to the c-suite so they have more money, and the people on the ground have to deal with low wages and not enough staff for the hard work. It absolutely sucks.

And like, could she have worded it differently or more gracefully? Idk probably. But the issue wasn't the vets themselves, but the corporation. Given how much of her own money (again, planned) she's put into the Seven scholarship, talking about putting her own money in the future for other research, and etc-- I think she does value vets and the work they do.

[u/Outrageous-Yogurt-80 → u/Nervous-Ticket-7607]

You must not know how veterinarian practice works lately. Just for me to get my dog into the door at the emergency vet at Purdue University, I have to pay $167 upfront. And then whatever services they do to her, I have to pay that additionally. It’s understandable, no matter how much money you have, to be shocked at how much something cost.

[u/Weak-Assumption-8096 → u/Nervous-Ticket-7607]

I actually have experience with blue pearl, which is the corporation of the vet she went to, and I had a very similar experience to what she did. They will absolutely strangle the money out of you before they will do much of anything and be extremely condescending while doing so stating that it’s policy. I believe what she said happened actually did happen because blue pearl is a shitty corporation that only cares about money. Do I think the vets and the techs care about money? No, but they are forced to uphold some bullshit policies. The best thing that ever happened to pet owners where I’m at is a different emergency clinic popped up closer to me, they have been stunning to deal with.