Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Thank you, Jonni, for a sane commentary. It's not a bad thing to remember that while nature can be beautiful, it usually isn't pretty. I have to wonder at people who talk about the noble heritage of the Arabian, living in tents, being part of the family....the romance of the dunes and all that. If they saw the actual tents and families where many of these horses came from, they'd be calling the SPCA and the child protection people. The actual Bedouins were poor, poor people usually with slightly more goats and children than they could afford and the horses were really lucky if they got any decent grazing. A lot of the time food might be camel milk and dried dates with maybe the date pits ground up for some protein...if the family could spare the date pits.

Everything DOES die. Everything....., including you, me and horses. Eventually we will all die. It is not something that can be stopped or even, many times postponed, it is part of the way things are supposed to be. All you can hope to do is make the way that we die a little better. Is it better to be starving because the land is overgrazed? Is it better to be adopted by some fool who then can't care for the horse? Is it better to be adopted by a well-meaning reasonably informed person who due to the vagaries of weather and the economy can no longer afford the horse before it's bounced to some other place, possibly time after time after time?

Sometimes I think that consuming some of these animals is not such a bad idea. If it's a quick death and not this long haul that the US has consigned the slaughter horses to, it's better for sure. I don't eat horse, but then I also don't eat much meat of any kind by personal choice.

It's sort of like the "animal rescue" facilities here that used to "rescue" injured street dogs who then spent their lives in cages. Now they still rescue them and fix them up but they return them to the streets where sometimes the government will decide that there are too many and that they are a disease risk, which they are, and get ride of them in another way.

At the end of the discussion, Bugs Bunny was still right: No one gets out of here alive.

Maryanne

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 8:50 AM, Tx Trigger <txtrigger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I remember driving near the Utah, Nevada border West of Salt Lake City, during one of the long XP rides, and stopping the truck to watch a handful of "wild" horses running across the desert hills. It was breathtaking to watch, and something I will never forget. It was straight out of a movie. Then, a few miles up the road, I came to a spot that had these long feeders put out, with about 50 - 100 horses gathered around them, waiting for the feed to magically appear. The scene I had witnessed earlier that afternoon, was now over shadowed by these horses who were now dependant upon people to come feed them.They were not in corrals, but they might as well have been, as they just stayed in that area, waiting to be fed.  They no longer seemed "wild" to me. And the numbers were staggering, and this was just ONE area where the horses roam.  Survival of the fittest, no longer applies to the horses, as they were getting feed dropped for them on a regular basis. Why? Because otherwise they would starve to death, and the bleeding hearts just can NOT allow THAT to happen. So now, we have too many of these horses, they are costing a bundle, and the bleeding hearts again, get upset at the thoughts of some of them being put down. Why is that so horrible?  Without the horses wandering free, and since they are being fed, or in holding pens, they no longer have natures culling of the herds. Coyotes, mountain Lions etc. are no longer the threat to the weak, or to some foals, as these horses are not in the same wild situations.  We have protected them from nature itself, by capturing them, and feeding and housing them.  

 

Society screams no to slaughter, saying it is inhumane, and now they scream no to euthanasia. I just do not understand why that is such a horrible option. Better for some to be given one final injection, or a quick bullet in the head, than living their lives in some corral stuffed full of too many horses because they can't be roaming free, and no one wants to "adopt" them.

 

Jonni

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Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
msgabbani@xxxxxxxxx

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