I'm sorry to hear you'd eat dog or cat. I guess the proper question would be, what wouldn't you eat?
I am puzzled at your comparison of deer and horse. I’ve helped butcher deer. There is barely any fat inside the muscle, just a thin layer around some cuts. The deer on my property may sleep during some of the day, but we see them at all hours and they run, walk and move most of the time. Compared to grazing horses I’ve observed, the deer can be more highly active. The local deer feed on corn and berries.
The key to tender deer meat is hanging, short periods of marinade and quick cooking. The large muscle cuts are tender and tasty. The tougher cuts are ground. The meat in the neck and legs is full of tendon and can even be difficult to grind, as the tendon will wrap around the auger and clog the plate. I simmer these cuts until tender and use them for dog food. The collagen in the connective tissue is good for the dog.
I’ve spoken with people who have eaten horse. One comment heard a lot is that it is *sweeter* than beef.
I’d try it and make up my own mind.
Horses aren’t raised for slaughter like cows, nor are they hunted. Most of those that are slaughtered belonged to irresponsible owners and lacking the slaughterhouse many just starved to death.
We have had many horses and we kept them up to their old age and never sent one to slaughter but when it got to where they could no longer eat or lay down and you could see that they were in excruciating pain, we shot them.
The guy I know who has been sending them to slaughter in Mexico just feeds them like you would a normal horse until he gets a truck load.
I’ve seen pleasure horses locked up in a stall most of their lives and it had nothing to do with eating them.
Thus we have taken only to eating what we consider the choicest meats.
That really only happen in the less hundred years or so.
Hate to break it to you, but horses don’t get fattened up for slaughter. And most horse owners I know support slaughtering horses, because there are too many unwanted horses living in miserable conditions or turned loose.
Right now, horses going to slaughter are trucked to Mexico, where the quality control is...mexican. It would be far better for the horses to be shipped less, and killed more humanely.
You don’t have to restrict a horses movement for it to get fat. Just put a round bale of hay in front of it and it will stand there all day long eating.
Most breeds get fat very easily.
Aging the meat will tenderize it just fine. Would you prefer that we continue shipping horses to Mexico slaughterhouses where they get their throats cut with a knife?