Hah, you think that's bad? Try owning a horse. Talk about demanding and exploitative! Six hundred a month for board, $125 for shoes every five weeks, $300 for just one blanket (and Miss Princess has several for different weather conditions, including a rain sheet, a cooler, a kinda cool weather blanket, a blanket to keep her hind end warm when she's being ridden, a super-cold weather blanket, a cover to wear to keep dust off her at shows, etc. etc. etc.) She has toys, too. She has all sorts of specials wraps and protective devices for her legs. She does not have one single thing that was bought because I felt like spoiling her, only stuff that was bought because I found out the hard way that it was necessary.
None of this includes, of course, the vet bills, the health insurance, or the cost of maintaining a truck and trailer to drag her around. I don't have the truck and trailer yet, just getting ready because I'm tired of paying other people to drag her around when I want to go somewhere. There are special supplements. There are training devices. There are are bridles (she has a dressage bridle, a show bridle, a schooling bridle, and a flat hunting bridle), bits to go with same, and the saddles (two Stubbens, one for dressage and one for hunting, and I'm not even going to tell you about the angst of getting those fitted to her). We have a stack of saddle pads roughly 2 1/2 feet high. Girths, leads, lunge lines, health products, grooming devices, treatments, medications. THe list of purchases doesn't count the time taken off of work to meet the vet or the farrier out at the barn, or the drives to go buy all this crap, or the lessons and training.
She's pretty smug about all of this. She figures she deserves it and gets indignant if she doesn't get it.
I love this horse. I love my two dogs, too. And I don't want the HSUS to spend hundreds of millions to lobby legislators so that I no longer have the right to ride the horse, or hunt, or even own animals.