Re: [RC] Desperate Times for Horse Owners and for Horses - Barbara McCrary
I was talking to our vet this morning, as he was
treating one of our bulls. I told him I had a lovely 9 year old
mare (that we bred and raised) for sale; then we got to talking about horse
overpopulation, etc. He is one of the many members of AAEP that tried so
hard to prevent the shut-down of horse slaughter plants. Now it may sound
like cruelty to kill horses for dog food or people food, but consider the
alternatives: people turning unwanted shod horses loose in the Nevada
desert, people taking unwanted horses to trailheads and tying them to someone's
trailer while the owners are out riding, people considering euthanizing unwanted
horses or just plain shooting them to get rid of them. Tell me these
alternatives are better than sending them to slaughter where the meat will
actually be put to good use, and the horses can realize a small sum of money for
the owner. And the cost of feeding and incarcerating 30,000 BLM horses is
on whose backs? Ours, the taxpayers! And the "wild" horses just keep
on breeding.....
We had planned on using our mare for our own endurance
riding, but while she was growing up, we were getting old and arthritic and
found ourselves not riding endurance any more. So what do we do with an
unwanted horse? The people who were in sympathy against humane slaughter
didn't do the horse world much of a favor. Maybe THEY should pay the
entire bill for keeping 30,000 plus unwanted horses..... There simply
aren't enough people to adopt all the unwanted horses in the western
U.S.
If anyone wants a very nice mare, she's for sale at a
reasonable price.
Subject: [RC] Desperate Times for Horse
Owners and for Horses
And here's a problem to add to that same equation: the 33,000+
'wild' BLM horses that have been rounded up and are held in holding pens
across the west. (Not counting the 30,000 in the wild). I wrote a little about
it in
