Re: [RC] Not exactly Animal Cops, was Humane Society (OT) - Mary Krauss
"Somebody" (???) said:
well i dont see why it needs shootin, i think thats as cruel as neglect. i have two thirty year old horses, and just stood with a friend while she put a 42 year old one down. yes, the old ones i have are underweight, they just dont absorb their food that well, but the are happy, and sound, and loved.
i wish this were going to have a better ending
I appreciate that it sounds like a bad outcome, but I suspect you'd see why "shootin" is an excellent option were you here. ?This horse is going to die sooner rather than later regardless of intervention. ?His injury on one leg is probably treatable, but he's permanently and painfully lame (I'm betting extreme arthritis from what I could tell) on the other front knee which he can barely use. ?His feet are a mess--yes, possibly treatable with extreme care--or he might experience Barbaro's demise where a 4-legged horse simply can't continue on 3 legs. ?He's not able to keep weight on despite plenty of forage--who knows the state of his teeth. ?On a side note, I'm not sure we should expect or even desire that people resort to sloppy mashes two or three times/day just to keep a horse alive well beyond its "natural" lifespan of 20-something years. ?It's not the fuzzy ending we may want for our particular equine friends, but it beats hanging out in misery the rest of ?the winter. ?This guy was well-loved for a very long time--I wished he'd had a kinder end long before the current deterioration began. ?
Having said that, I appreciate that killing a horse sounds cruel regardless of its necessity. ?My friend who makes mashes for her 34 year-old quarter horse and 42 year-old shetland is unable to put them down and plans instead to sell her two 19 year-olds at auction because she can't afford to keep all of them--one of these has mild arthritis, the other has a seemingly permanent but on again and off again suspensory injury. ?They'll probably wind up on a crowded truck to Mexico while her geriatrics slurp down buckets of money she doesn't have for several more years..... ?Were it me, I'd put the two seniors down and let the other two have five or ten nice years. ?All of this business of playing God is terribly uncomfortable and personal. ?Good luck to all of us as we make our way through the tangle. ?
