Posted on 05/30/2008 9:36:28 PM PDT by B4Ranch
"You can die of good intentions." That is the best summary I can give of an editorial I read recently about the bill to ban horse slaughter that was passed last year.
The editor and I had discussed the issue when it was a hot topic. At the time, she could not imagine "a horse being dragged across a kill floor with chains around its legs" - a gruesome description that elicits a sickening feeling in the heart of any sensitive being.
But a few short months later, some of the bill's supporters are taking a new look.
One of the factors that hastened the disintegration of the bill's good intentions has been America's economic pinch. Owning a horse in most civilized countries today is a luxury hobby.
Backyard horses are expensive pets, easily thousands of dollars a year for most owners. Today, gas is more than $3 a gallon. Food is up. Essentials like cell phones, I-Pods, computers, big-screen televisions, video games, golf course fees and movies are up. A triple-shot large latte five times a week now costs more than $20. And folks with a real estate license have been trying to sell their house for a year.
The kids have gone or outgrown the horse in your backyard. The hay, fly control, regular vaccinations and worming continues, and the vet says your 18 year-old equine has ring bone (diagnosis includes radiographs; nerve blocks and advice was $325).
You'd love to sell the horse, but people aren't stupid. You make a call or two to the horse rescue and retirement pasture. They're either full or they want money from you to feed it. The thought of a professional euthanasia, then a winch truck or front-end loader to haul it to the dump ... "a horse being dragged across ae field with chains around its legs."
The editor said all the reader response to her editorial was negative. On her follow-up, she found the majority of callers she talked to didn't own a horse. Couldn't afford it. But they thought slaughtering horses was cruel and you shouldn't eat them.
Good intentions, no responsibility. We see it a lot. Critics, columnists, movie stars, reporters, politicians. We're now in the mess created by the well-intentioned, and it's getting worse.
And where are they now? Offering to pay your euthanasia and burial fee? Offering to take your horse and care for it? Not a peep.
It's no secret who is going to be cleaning up after them. The same people who always clean up after the well-intentioned. In this case, the real animal lovers; the humane, the sympathetic and the practical ... and they'll do it with no thanks or recognition.
But that's not why they do it. They do it for the horses.
Baxter Black is a veterinarian and cowboy poet. His column appears weekly and airs each Monday at 6:20 a.m. on KGNC Talk Radio 710. He can be reached at baxterblack.com or (800)654-2550.
Am still up late and saw this article posted.
And where are they now? Offering to pay your euthanasia and burial fee? Offering to take your horse and care for it? Not a peep.
And where was the owner's foresight before buying the horse? Don't buy an animal if you can't afford to keep it and care for it until it dies.
Life happens. If they had the horse a year or two that is one things but unexpected bills can wreck havoc with your finances. Few of us are privileged to be able to see twenty years down the road.
Few of us are privileged to be able to see twenty years down the road.
That's true, but a horse lives that long, a fact that's known (or should be known) to anybody contemplating purchasing one. It's also known that horses are quite expensive animals to own.
As somebody who has family members who have owned horses and who have behaved responsibly towards their charges, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the point of view expressed in this article. But it's late and I'm tired and slightly annoyed, so I might see things differently in the morning...
WSJ had an article some months back about the predicament of horses whose owners had become too poor in the economic downturn to care for them and were unable to find a buyer.
“Animal Cops” shows a lot of these unfortunate horses.
Better to be humanely slaughtered and be eaten by the French than die slowly of starvation and neglect.
The norm in this area seems to be turning them loose with the ‘wild horses’.
***Don’t buy an animal if you can’t afford to keep it and care for it until it dies. ***
And what do you do with a 700 lb animal that dies? Can you bury it in the back yard? It’s not like a dog that dies. Let the buzzards have at it? Think of the decomposition smell. Now multiply that times 1000 just for one area.
Many people who bought horses did it BEFORE the ban on slaughter.
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