Re: RC: Re: slaughter/Temple Grandin

["Tiffany D'Virgilio" <dvirgilio@mindspring.com>]

Title: Re: RC:  Re: slaughter/Temple Grandin

I wonder what you would use to kill a sock?
 Anyway, I don't think all people who rescue are clouded by emotion or oppose slaughter. I certainly wish the trip to the slaughterhouse was short and merciful. But, I feel much the same as Kat does. Though my two mares were rescues and are great horses and certainly deserving of a good home, good owner, and good training, not all are. One mare that I fostered for two years was so ruined mentally that I finally had to tell the woman taking her at the end of that time that I thought she should be a pasture pet and nothing more. That mare would kill someone if she was put seriously under saddle. She probably would have been better off dead than sentenced to a life with no chance of ever liking humans again. She bit, would strike, kick, you name it. All four horses I have had under my care were untrained. This is not a job for a casual horseperson. You have to know how to start a horse from scratch, sometimes taking on horses with histories of abuse. It really is not for everyone. 
I very much value intelligent rescuers who had the money, connections, training and know how to turn a horse into something. Even then, there are horses who are lost and have NO chance of a decent life. Sometimes with their minds so gone that slaughter is a humane alternative to a life that will be fraught with danger, fright and major distrust. Those horses are a danger to others, themselves and other horses and will never be right no matter how much love or money is poured into them. 
Until the industry stops breeding every horse that CAN breed instead of every horse that deserves to be bred we are gonna have a problem. 
Tiffany