Thanks for your reply Chrys2017
I very much agree that the mental welfare of every horse is paramount and the NH that I am involved in have the opportunity to do all those things you mention on a fairly regular basis.
For sure it is a professional business and they have a training schedule (albeit with a long summer break as previously mentioned) but I was recently on a stable visit where I was shown how each individual horse's programme was broken down in minute detail (and it really was in miniscule detail and went far beyond just exercise and feeding) to ensure that each unique horse's optimum requirements for mental and physical health were met.
Admittedly, the mental welfare of horses in training was not very enlightened in the past (as was the husbandry of many different sorts of animals) but huge strides have been taken in this area of late.
Equally huge strides have been taken in the retraining and rehoming of racehorses. Have a look at this website and all of the different activities that ex racehorses are involved in nowadays.
In fact there was a parade at Aintree just a few days ago featuring 10 ex racehorses, each of which have found a new career path here!.
Btw, one of the horses, Mad Moose, is the horse referred to in this thread who demonstrated that you can't make a 500Kg animal do something that it doesn't want to! Mad Moose was notorious for "planting" (not starting or moving on the track) and has recently taken to dressage instead!