Posts Tagged ‘Drew Blair’
A chance to be proactive
One of the Fugly Blog readers recently emailed us about a case in Huntington, Indiana. We took a look at the news story and the accompanying video and thought to ourselves: who the fuck hired this woman as an animal control officer? Don’t you have to at least like horses to work there? Her attitude and body language, to our admittedly untrained eyes, say that she is not happy to be there. She appears to be annoyed with the interview and all the fuss made over the deteriorating health of these horses. Not to mention her incorrect assessment of the overabundance of cribbing due to boredom. [be sure to watch the video before continuing to read]
So we decided to offer our two cents to the investigating reporter. Last night we sent the following email to Drew Blair.
Dear Ms. Blair,
One of our readers forwarded us a link to your article (http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/local/neighbor-concerned-over-horses-care-dbl). Now, I don’t know if anyone has already contacted you about “cribbing” in horses and the erroneous statements made by Ms. Vanover but in case no one has, here are a few facts about horses.
-Cribbing is a behavior associated with boredom (she was correct there), but it is almost exclusively seen in stabled horses. Horses with grass to eat will not engage in this behavior.
-I have never, in over 15 years of experience, seen a horse crib on a tree, branch or side of a building. In fact, I think it may be impossible – here’s a description of cribbing from horse-cribbing.com “Typically when a horse cribs, he sets his upper teeth on an object (usually about chest level), presses down, opens his mouth, arches his neck, and pulls back” while sucking in air (hence why cribbing is also called “wind sucking”). In fact, if nothing else, it is easier for a horse to crib from a horizontal fence (as seen behind Ms. Vanover – which showed no evidence of cribbing) than a tree, branch or building. Certainly a horse could chew the trees and the side of the building but they would only do this if grass was not available (as in if they were in a sand enclosure rather than a field) or they’re trying to prevent starvation.
-The trees and branches in your video were stripped of bark – that is not indicative of cribbing – there should have been a groove/indentation for the horse to get a foothold (for lack of a better word) with their teeth, allowing them to pull back and suck in more air.
-If the horses had sufficient food in their field, they wouldn’t be leaning so hard on a fence as to almost collapse it, just to get at a few blades of grass. If horses have adequate food, they are not concerned with whether or not the “grass is greener on the other side”
Grass alone is not enough to keep a horse at a healthy weight, especially in the winter – and especially if there are too many horses on too small a piece of land (there are other factors to consider, but aren’t strictly relevant here).
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the rescue efforts that recently occurred on a farm in Many, La. – that was a hell of a lot worse than this case but these horses were starving and fed from trees. Some of them suffered from impaction colic due to the in-digestibility of the bark they ate from trees.
I don’t know what Ms. Vanover’s education or experience with horses is, but it is clear that she does not have their best interests at heart. Hopefully this helps clear up her statements. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
COME ON! For once abuse is being reported before the horses reach a Henneke body scale of 1 and they’re going to do nothing?!
Ok, ok, mini outburst done. We understand that if an animal control officer shows up and the horses have proper food and water there’s probably nothing they can do. But show a little compassion – or at least pretend to while being video taped – and promise to come back and check up on them. Otherwise, the next time you hear about these horses (in a few months time) they will be in “grave danger”, or in the grave itself.
