"Here's your typical slaughter bound horse."

The backyard horse

Here is your basic slaughter bound horse. She was surrendered to us last night when the owner decided that Habitat for Horses wasn’t going to leave him alone. The dysfunctional owner, having placed the horse is a “pasture” smaller than most living rooms, decided that the horse needed to be tied up with a thin, wire normally used as a dog runner. The mare probably started fighting with the wire sometime in the afternoon.

The wire became tangled  in the brush, wrapped around stumps and trees and then wrapped tightly around the horse’s back leg. The constant struggles led to foot being nearly severed. There is no telling how much blood was lost by the time we arrived. It was bad – really bad.

His response? “Well, I was gonna’ give the horse to my neighbor. I suppose he can take it now.”

Uh, no. If left alone the horse would have been dead in a few hours. 

“Well, can I just give it to you?”

Probably another half gallon of blood drained out of her on the way to the vet clinic. The foot was barely attached. Once unloaded and in the stock, she went down – hard. 

I’ve seen that look far too many times. That’s what nightmares are made out of – that haunting scream, ”I don’t want to die!,” from horses starved in pastured, cut to ribbons by barbed wire, horses dying from lack of water. Yes, those are the direct causes, but what caused that problem?

Stupidity. Ignorance. Absolute mindlessness. Total idiots breeding horses with piss-poor conformation knowing full well that there is no market for the foals. Not just backyard breeders, either. The same applies to AQHA members, APHA members, even the 10,000 thoroughbreds that are slaughtered ever year. No market for them because there is not a single human brain cell in their wrinkled pea brains that says, “Uh, what are you doing?”

I bet I received 20 emails yesterday screaming such highly intelligent questions as, “What do you intend to do with all the horses?”

My response – why would you think that I need to take responsibility for the results of your mindless breeding program? Do I have to take care of your kids, too? What the hell happened to your level of responsibility for the life you create?

Much as I hate to tell people this, horse slaughter is a business, not a service. If the demand stops, so will the slaughter trucks. And trust me on this one – the EU will finally be forced to face up to the fact that American horsemeat is about as filthy a substance as you could get down your throat without throwing up, absolutely crammed full of poisons. 

Do you think maybe we didn’t give this horse any pain medication? 

Our crew and the vet crew worked late into the night trying to save this girl. By midnight she was up and munching hay, this morning she was looking out the stall windows, watching her new world.

If she survives, and there is a serious chance she won’t, she will never walk normal again. I guess for a lot of folks, that makes her prime for the slaughter truck. Hell, I bet she’s bring $25 at the auction, and I’m sure someone in France would love to have her for dinner.

But through some small miracle she ended up as Case Number 11-152 on our books and, God willing, someday soon she’ll be standing by the hay stacks with Pete and Tiger and a half dozen “useless” horses, doing what horses do best.

And to the killers, to the heartless, nonthinking, mindless blobs who drool over the possibility of grabbing another cheap horse for the slaughter truck – too bad. You loose, this mare wins.

Did you call the President yet? I did, five times yesterday and twice today so far. Keep it up. Never stop. This is what you are fighting for – the lives of horses that never got a chance to know what love is all about.  

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