When horse people aren’t spending thousands for a new saddle, you can convince me that they can’t afford a few hundred bucks to put a horse down, or don’t have time to find it a home, or better yet.... keep what they’ve committed to and used up all the useful life on, until it is time.
If it colicked they would pay to put it down. If it broke a leg they would pay to put it down - because then they wouldn’t have a choice.
It’s all about choices.
This is a poor time for anyone to get into the horse slaughter market in this country.
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Irresponsible horse owners are seldom the same ones paying thousands for a new saddle; irresponsible horse owners are usually the same type as irresponsible dog and cat owners. Those people think emotionally that they want animals, and will not educate themselves as to what is involved with actually having animals. When reality hits them the animal is the one to suffer.
Take any city of any size and find out how many dog and cat owners don’t get their animals spayed or neutered, don’t get them shots or adequate vet care. When their animals outgrow their cuteness or get bred many simply dump them. Others starve them in the backyard while allowing them to breed to any other dog/cat available with no thought to what will happen to the puppies/kittens. Many don’t budget for anything beyond food for their animals, so can’t pay a vet bill if needed or pay to get animals euthanized. Now think about the same type of people getting horses instead of dogs and cats. That is the reality.
To say the same people that are buying saddles that cost thousands of dollars are the ones who starve horses is the same as comparing those that spend hundreds of dollars on a dog bed to the people that let their dogs run in the streets or starve in the back yard.
Just as there are good and bad owners of dog, cats, other pets; there are good and bad owners of horses and other livestock. So far there are no good solutions for bad owners of dogs, cats, etc, there seems to be no good solution for bad horse owners either.
By the way, the irresponsible owners do not even take a coliced horse to a vet, many have such little knowledge of a horse they don’t know colic when they see it. Nor do they generally take one to the vet for a broken leg or any other reason and would never, ever pay to get one put down.