Posts Tagged ‘cruelty’
How Did Millie End Up Here?
We see horrific stories of starved horses every day.
On August 15, Parker County officials charged a woman with
animal cruelty after nine horses in her care died last week. Linda K. Pharis,
who was supposed to be taking care of the animals, faces up to two years in
jail for the Class A misdemeanor if convicted.
According to various
news sources, on Aug. 19, the Parker County Sheriff’s Department also arrested
the owner of nine horses, Keith Hall, of Weatherford, Texas, charging him with
a Class A misdemeanor, Cruelty To Animals/Livestock. He’s officially charged
with “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly failing to provide necessary food
water and care for an animal, to wit: nine horses, by failing to provide water
and food for two or more days.”
The details are available on the internet, complete with the
blame game going on between Pharis and Hall.
Pharis claims she contacted Hall about the condition of the
horses and his response was to tell her to wait until he arrived before she fed
them. I couldn’t find any concrete information on this, but I’m guessing she
also told him about the water system breaking down and the fact the horses had
no water.
When questioned about his reasons, Hall reportedly told
investigators he does not feed the majority of his horses anything except what
they graze from in the pasture. He also does not put hay out except during
winter months.
Later, a starving 24-year-old mare was found in a stall,
with her young foal stalled next to her. Although she had water, it was
contaminated, her feet were severely neglected and her condition was so dire
she was later euthanized.
The mare, Millie Montana (Montana Doc x Cal Filly Bar x Cal
Bar) was a champion cutter which carried trainer Joe Suiter to a victory worth
$92,468 with a final-round 221.5 and earned $139,353 during her cutting career,
according to Equi-Stat records.
She was shown in non-pro classes by Hall himself before
being retired as a broodmare.
I’m getting pretty stinking tired of stories about a wealthy
horse owner who lives in an entirely different state, owning and raising horses
he has so little interest in they starve to death without him noticing. This
kind of situation doesn’t happen overnight. These horses had to have been
suffering for months before they finally began to die.
Pharis must have been earning a damn good check to not have
called the authorities. When does a caretaker decide to let the law intervene?
When the horses were 100 pounds underweight? 200? 300? How
about when the water quit working?
I am notorious for seeing two sides to every story. But I
can’t find another side to this one. Greed, stupidity, cruelty, maybe a little
sociopathic involvement, but it comes down to nothing more than two worthless
people allowing 10 horses to die because they couldn’t be bothered.
This situation proves no horse is safe, from the Fuglies to
the best bred horses in the country. It also makes me see indiscriminate
breeding is not just about the neighbor’s uncut 10-year-old mini slipping out
of his single strand barbwire run and running your good mare into the fence.
Irresponsible breeding can be the result of a $15,000 stud
fee, if the owner cares so little about the result he lets his horses die in a
field, or swelter their life away in a filthy stall.
I don’t know the history of the other horses, but Millie
earned this rat almost $140,000 and still was left to starve. I bet her baby is
as fancy as they come too.
With the horse market in the tank this man may have decided
he didn’t want to think about his investment going down the toilet. He might
have forgotten the horses weren’t cars, you couldn’t just shut the garage door
and leave them until the economy turned around, but I just can’t get my head
around what happened here unless he simply hated his horses.
This is a huge part of why I quit training. When a horse
becomes a commodity it no longer makes it as a companion animal. Reduced to
being a thing, the only concern is whether the investment is performing
according to schedule.
The horses in the upper tiers of showing tend to have owners
who hire someone else to ride the horse. The trainers may or may not care about
the horses they ride, but if they don’t win, they don’t eat. Riding these
horses is a job. Attachment to an individual horse (or nineor ten) becomes not
just secondary but a liability. This removes the horse from the protection it
might receive from being a beloved pet.
Individual horses with individual owners tend to be the ones
who lead full and satisfying lives. Of course it’s not all of them; horses for
the most part have a very small chance of dying a peaceful death at a ripe old
age.
If we look at the whole forest, the research into veterinary
care, breeding and the promotion of horses comes from big money and large scale
breeding.
But I can’t help but feel it’s the one on one bond that give
a horse the best chance of survival. The focus on an individual tree is what
makes us truly understand the beauty of the forest.
Pleasure or Pain?
There is an awful lot of discussion about the cruelty of western pleasure.
Pinned ears, wringing tails, sour expressions, crippled, unnatural, any of these snippets ring a bell? These are many of the terms I’ve heard defining western pleasure and I’ve certainly seen horses riding around the ring which looked exactly like this.
I’ve seen this in dressage competition, reined cow horse events, on many hunter jumpers, reiners and gaited horses. Oh yeah, I’ve seen pleasure horses looking the same way.
When “horse trainer” first became my job description on my taxes I was working for a small boarding, breeding and show facility. I gave lessons, trained some, started a few colts and learned to ride all around western events from an extemely accomplished young trainer so I could take over showing Lake, my boss’ stud.
This young man had trained the horse and shown him for awhile and was more than willing to teach me the ins and outs of the pleausure side of the tracks so he could quit riding the flipping horse. Lake just wasn’t very talanted. He was rude, hot and Fugly at its finest. The young trainer couldn’t wait to get out from dealing with him.
I learned a lot about the slow events, mainly that they bored me to absolute tears. The training was boring, the shows were boring and so were the horses. I’m a go fast kind of rider and I prefer to get in and be done at the arena, so this all day of showing… at …the…same…snails…pace was just about killing me.
Lucky for me, the work was intricate and the horse was a ball of neurotic fire, so I was able to maintain. This born-to-be-a-gelding was not particularly bred to do anything except scream a bunch and try to breed anything that looked good to him at the moment, but the young trainer had molded him into something that could win at open and breed one day, one judge shows, so the owners felt they had a gem.
I will always be grateful to the them, the young trainer and Lake. I learned a lot from about the sport of western pleasure and western riding, gained some much needed patience, developed a sixth sense that told me to duck a split second before Lake struck or lunged to bite and gained a bunch of training tools I still use today, even though, short of chariot racing, my discipline is about as far from WP as it can get.
Here’s the deal, as far as I’m concerned, WP is no worse or better than any other discipline. When a good born WP horse is born, it hits the ground with a low headed, flat kneed way of going. They are slow moving, quiet minded, pretty darn sweet horses. Of course not all of them are, but I’m betting over 80% of the top bred pleasure horses as good minded as a golden retriever.
WP takes each gait and intensifies it. The natural slow movement is made slower, the level top line is kept level at all times, the “sweepy” leg action is exagerated, and the horse looks like it is riding against the current of a fast, deep river.
Isn’t intensifying the movement that makes a horse beautiful the basis of all horse shows?
Morgans and saddlebreds have their heads and tails cranked so high it appears the rider is the only thing topping them from meeting in the middle. Their natural snappy legged motion is exagerated as much as possible.I’ve spent some time with a Morgan trainer, he won consistantly enough to have a barn full of clients and I have never been around more unnatural training practices in my life, including WP.
A QH’s inate cow sense is used to turn a cutter into a crouching, leaping torpedo. I’ve known cutters so reactive they can’t go out of the arena because their hyper awareness has made them so ADD they can’t take the stimulation outside a pen. They sure could cut though.
Like it or hate it, people entertain themselves by dinking with the natural order and this becomes incredibly obvious at horse shows.
The problem I see with WP is the horses go so slow it’s an easy class for a beginner to start in. It’s pretty hard to fall off of one of those guys, so I understand the attraction.
It is also very easy to fall into the trap of training through the mouth instead of the feet, so an awful lot of crappy WP trainers and green riders can get some semblance of a pleasure horse gait by cranking and yanking on the horses faces.
This is a Youtube video of the warmup at QH Congrss. If you watch you can pick up on who’s training their horses by the crank n’ yank method and who is driving their horse forward from the hind to the front as it should be.
I swear, a few of these horses look like they’re dealing with Rollkur, but that can’t be, Rollkur is a dressage thingy and the world of dressage wouldn’t exagerate a horse’s natural way of going.
WP training can be ruthless. Tying the horse’s head high in his stall the night before an event is common practice. A tired horse with a stiff neck seems to have the look so sought after by the judges. Scarred sides and mouths are not uncommon and I hate the dead look that eventually creeps into their eyes.
What I’m getting at is it’s not the separate disciplines that are the problem, it’s the people behind the discipline.
Do I personally want to ride WP anymore? No. Do I find just as many examples of cruelty in mine? Yes. I personally do everything I can not to sink to the lows I have seen, but I still want to be able to show.
I have been working for years to develop a sytem which will allow my horses to have a good life and still be able to go out in the pen and win a check. Am I there yet? Kind of.
The problem I see is too many people ready to accept the absurd heights the horse show industry is willing to push its horses to. We’re the ones who need to be accountable, not the judges, the trainers or the industry standards, because none of this would be going on if we, the horse owners weren’t buying into it. As long as there is an owner who doesn’t care what happens to her horse as long as the horse wins there will be a Cleve or an Anke to step up and provide.
I’m going to close with a video of Red Hot Krymsum, one of the best WP horses today. While I still say to each his own, I can’t help but admire such a beautiful horse. Now if he could be allowed to turn back into a real one.
An update that MUST be shared
OMG…choo choo choo!
Read this thread on COTH starting with around page 130 here. This is high entertainment! Apparently Alisija has been barn-hopping and has landed with someone just as royally effed up as she is. Birds of a feather!
If you missed my original blog on Alisija, it can be found here: It’s funny how we never have “accidents” like this!
Oh…wow. Just saying. It’s amazing how every freak-show in the horse world finds each other, isn’t it?
P.S. I’m still a member of the Ain’t Killed Any! Club…we need to give out awards to people who manage on a daily basis to deal with horses with a wide variety of training issues without doing stupid shit that ends with a dead horse. Hell, I know people that do nothing BUT unhandled BLM mustangs and they are proud members of the Ain’t Killed Any! Club.
OK, seriously, you starved a PONY?
I am very pleased to announce that, due to several members of the Auction Horses board having enough spine to FILE A REPORT and GIVE THEIR NAMES, the pony is safe today. He was seized by King County Animal Control and is happily eating mush. I am told he is as bad as Grace, but he is receiving excellent care, so we can only hope for a great result. Of course these morons who had him are threatening legal action against all involved. Yeah, blah blah blah, the only legal action is going to be the cruelty charge against YOU, asshat family.
More to come on this case but when I get my hands on the “before the neglect” picture, you’re all going to be looking for these folks with tar and feathers…this is a very, very sad case of a valuable show pony falling into the totally wrong hands, and these people are going to be exceptionally well known the second I get my hands on their name. (If you already know it, feel free to post it! I’m told the pony was on the corner of 170th PL SE and SE Lake Holm Road in Auburn, Washington)
And to the original person who was scared to report and give her name, honey, I’M still alive after over four years of screaming abusers’ names to the world. The odds are, you will be too. REPORT, REPORT, REPORT. It is your duty as a decent human being.
Yes, it really IS illegal to dump an animal!
I have a super busy weekend going on so I’ll keep this short! I mentioned this story briefly last week, but now I have more to tell you:
Here’s the bad news:
The good news is that they really have been arrested!
The better news is, I’m rehabbing the big galoot for Second Chance Ranch!. I picked him up Saturday. He is so sweet! He is covered in scurf and rainrot, very thin, and cut up all over, but he loves people and loves to be brushed.
I would love to find out who he is. He’s a quality horse and may be a warmblood although he could just be a TB with no tattoo. I don’t have a stick here but if he’s not 17 hands, he’s very close to it. Does anyone in Southern California recognize him and his markings? He does not have any vices but he’s very pushy at the moment. Working on re-installing the ground manners 
Very clean legs. A pig in the stall. I would absolutely love to find out his history. I have a bad feeling this is someone’s nice old hunter or dressage horse that was given away to “a good home” when he could only do light riding…and now this is the outcome, down the road.
And of course, if you would like to help him, please donate to Second Chance Ranch. He will be available for adoption but of course we want to get him back to excellent condition, and evaluate him under saddle first, so probably not until mid-summer. He is happily scarfing up alfalfa pellet mush (heck, I can barely get in the door with it, he just puts his whole nose in it and gets mush all over his blaze) so I really don’t think it’s going to take long before he’s absolutely stunning again!
One very weird thing I’ve never seen before…tell me if you have. He knelt all the way down to get out of the trailer. Do you think this is related to the visual impairment, or is he afraid of hitting his head from being hauled in small trailers? I went to get him with a big one, so he had plenty of space, and he loaded fine once we gave him a little time to look and sniff.
Oh, and he needs a name! Any thoughts?
