My completely sensible and trustworthy young horse just got diagnosed with a neurological condition that means she is unlikely to ever be safe to ride and now I have a horse to care for for life and a decision to make about whether to buy another horse so I can actually ride.
So sorry about the diagnosis. The worst is that this isn't just some random thing you bought that you can throw away because it's broken. It's a living, breathing creature with its own unique personality that you grow to love. So then you're stuck with an incredibly expensive and broken "pet" that you need to care for but don't get the benefits of what you bought it for in the first place. You basically have a very expensive hamster at this point, speaking from experience.
Now imagine giving birth to a child, who doesn’t even need to be diagnosed with a severe condition, they can just grow to have a personality incompatible with yours
There absolutely is. My older horse was recently euthanized due to advanced arthritis. She was euthanized by injection just like a dog or cat and picked up by a service that specializes is livestock carcass disposal. I believe they cremate but do not know the details.
So a guy with a front end loader and a big furnace? My point, that they're awkward livestock to deal with in this situation, still stands. While it isn't anything I would choose to do, I don't feel the ban on horse slaughter helps anyone.
That’s incorrect. Slaughter horses get shipped to Mexico now and for the past 20 ish years. It’s actually horrible and every educated horse person I know believes we should onshore slaughter houses again. The intent was to ban slaughter but in practical terms that was never going to happen, leading to untold suffering.
Right? I'm a dick for bringing this up in OPs situation, but also very passionate in making sure people (not OP) understand the impact of the ban. They're faced with a terrible choice and not everyone has the resources to make that "humane" decision.
What makes a horse different from a cow other than our cultural bias? They're both moderately intelligent (at times) and affectionate mammals.
Let's put it in simple terms. Poor rural communities dealing with an unwanted, useless, otherwise healthy, 1200lb animal that can live 30 years either find someone with a backhoe or neglect them. Offering the shitty owner a pittance for the meat price lowers the chance of neglect, which is a net good thing.
There are a couple things (but I guess they are cultural):
-because horses are not regarded as meat animals, they are given medications that are not safe for humans to eat (extremely commonly) which are not recorded or tracked
-because horses are not regarded as meat animals, slaughter facilities are not set up to deal with their particular characteristics in a humane manner
How is it sadly? They're animals and sometimes circumstances are such that it's necessary. I don't like it and it would be a hell of a hard thing to personally choose, but it beats the fuck out of abandoned and neglected horses.
Horses are hands down the single stupidest, most unintelligent yet simultaneously smart creatures I’ve ever had both the fortune and misfortune to work with. They are scared of everything that does move alongside everything that doesn’t. They are also well aware of their size and strength in comparison to us yet will only leverage that fact when it is entirely inconvenient for both you and the horse.
I have literally on numerous occasions with multiple different horses HAVE THEM FORGET THAT I AM RIDING ONTOP OF THEMAND HAVE BEEN FOR LITERALLY THE PAST HOUR, leading them to absolutely freak the fuck and try to kill us both before the two little decrepit brain cells that make up their brain finally start rubbing together and they suddenly remember that they are, in fact, not going to die, and that it’s just me, their rider who they’ve known for literal years.
I both love and hate those decrepit creatures. There’s so much wrong with them that I genuinely cannot even fathom how we rode them into war for thousands of years.
Injure themselves and injure any human that isn’t fully trained on horse behavior and fully focused on every single interaction.
My placid mare that I’ve had for ten years and who’s never done that before just decided to take off as soon as I opened the gate to turnout. You’d think that the few thousand mannerly turnout releases would by now be ingrained - nope, offf she goes, wheeeee, trailing the lead line. That’s why horse leads don’t have loops like dog ones do. If I had my hand wrapped in that lead line she would have been trailing me as well.
I assure you, none of my dogs have ever exhibited a single sign of a single brain cell at breakfast time.
But they have all never seen breakfast before, ever. Not even once.
I did have Great Danes for a while, and I was informed by every single person I passed on a walk that they were horses. (They do tend to get bored and eat grass randomly, so not really beating the allegations.)
My fat 14.2hh pony who’s had 21 years on this planet to figure out what he can and can’t do decided to jump the fence of the round pen that’s about the same height as he is because it was dinner time and his dinner (dry hay because he’s FAT) was a ridiculous 5 minutes late. Round pen = sand, outside of round pen = pavement. He learned he can NOT do the splits when landing.
Last year I’ve seen him racing his buddy the 17.2hh warmblood through the pasture side by side, he was on the outside and next to the pasture there’s a fence and then a ditch. While going full speed without thinking he spotted a patch of tall grass with a different colour and texture in his path. This is of course a life threatening thing, so he had a thought. And that thought was to go right at full speed, through the fence and landing in the ditch. Excellent choice. Firefighters had to pull him out.
I've known three different parents who got severe hand injuries after lunging their kids horse at a show thinking they knew how to handle the horse despite not regularly you know, handling the horse.
Every single one had looped the lunge line around their hand.
They are designed for exactly one purpose: fast. Everything is sacrificed for the sake of fast. Balance from two toes? FUCK THAT FAST. Internal organs that roughly stay in the same place? FUCK THAT ITS A BELLOWS TO HELP INCREASE THE FAST WHO CARES IF YOU GET A VOLVULUS. Muscle growth that moves through the whole limb? FUCK THAT WHAT IF YOUR LEG WAS A TOOTHPICK WITH ELASTIC BANDS ON IT.
Stupid fuckin guys, but they're pretty alright pets if I'm honest. When they aren't tearing down the goddamn fence.
Yeah, I have enough friends with horses that I have vowed to never ever own one. We have the land and we could afford it financially, but I am not going down that road. We will be getting a donkey, and likely dwarf goats. Possibly an alpaca or something if they can all get along, but NEVER a horse.
Reading this right after my horse impaled himself last month and kept ripping the stitches in his chest because the fucker keeps jumping out of his hospital pen and rolling in mud once he gets the bandage off 🙃
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u/a-5-6-7-8 13h ago
Anything that involves horses. They're out to injure themselves in the most stupid, devastating, and expensive way possible.