Posts Tagged ‘euthanasia’
PETA (warning: foul language)
WHAT THE FUCK PETA!!!
According to this article, the Virginia branch of PETA euthanized a whopping 96% of the animals they took “care” of in 2011.
“A PETA spokesperson said the organization would rather give animals “a painless death” than risk putting them in a situation where they would be abused, neglected, or sold for research, in an interview last year with Newsweek.”
Translation: They’re too goddamned lazy to 1) utilize an adoption pre-screen and 2) follow up on the adopted out animals and ensure their welfare.
What the fuck is wrong with these people! I tried to find any adoption information on their website and got bupkis!
There’s another article floating around stating this all might be the result of fabricated numbers by anti-PETA people. If that’s the case, then someone please explain to me the following numbers I found on the Government of Virginia’s website.
- 2006 - PETA took in 9637 animals, and euthanized 2981 = 31%
- 2007 - they took in 8362 and euthanized 1815 = 21%
- 2008 - 10016 animals went into PETA’s tender care, 2369 never left it = 24%
- 2009 - no info
- 2010 - 4569 animals were taken in, 3630 euthanized = 79%
- 2011 - PETA took in 2050 and euthanized 1965 = 96%
Anyone else find it just a wee bit odd that there’s a year with no information, and then all of the sudden the fucking Grim Reaper takes over PETA in Virginia?
I’m going to do something now that I promised myself I would never do without financial coercion: create and present a chart.
So I say again, what the fuck PETA? What the fuck, indeed.
I tried, but I can’t figure out a way to buy more minutes!
I’m going to do something on the blog today that I never do…I’m going to put a smile on the face of all the pro-slaughter asshats, faux rescues and abusive, money-grubbing trainers in America, with one single statement: I have gotten too busy to maintain this blog. This probably won’t come as a big shock to my regular readers; you’ve been patiently waiting longer and longer for blog entries and comments to be approved. I kept trying to scramble my schedule and find time to write, but it just isn’t happening, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. So the blog is for sale. It sells with the domain and the rights to all content written to date, which I suspect could be quite lucrative for someone who knows what they are doing (I don’t, and I’m too busy to find out). It is selling to the public with no restrictions; it may or may not go to someone who wishes to continue doing a blog about this subject matter. If you have any desire to bid on it yourself and have your opportunity for a whole lot of horse people to read your two cents worth, here is the listing.
Will I ever do another blog? Maybe, if my schedule changed a lot. I don’t see that in the foreseeable future. Right now I am at the “can I get in a 45 minute nap before I have to do X” point.
Will I still write elsewhere? Maybe. I just did a piece in the July 2011 Horse Illustrated about planning for your horse’s future if something unexpected happened to you. I do enjoy writing the educational, snark-free stuff…truly I do…and I do welcome offers to do so.
I’ll still Tweet. I seem to do a lot of that from horseback, or while waiting in line, no problem, so I’ll do my best to keep spreading the word about the kind of topics I’ve covered here on FHOTD.
Are there stories I wish I could have gotten to? YES. Oh my God…I have so much piled up in my e-mail. But it just isn’t going to happen. I sincerely apologize for all the unread e-mails in my account and the stories I just didn’t have time to deal with. I know some of them are big stories that should have been covered. Again, one of the reasons I’m quitting is because I know I’m not really doing my job here anymore and I am missing things that should be publicized. That said, there are many other blogs and Facebook pages now that share news to the horse community — many more than existed in 2007 when I started the blog. You guys know how to spread the word when the word needs to be spread — you don’t need a particular blog or particular forum to do it.
Am I retiring in response to some threat? LOL, of course not. You all know my response to threats: I have always said, please feel free to sue me if you believe you have cause. So far, haven’t seen a single complaint. And so far, none of the people who were going to shoot me have found me. Well, either that, or they are not very good shots, because I am sitting here typing this.
Hoover is doing great and will be looking for a home soon, if anyone has the desire to have a VERY snuggly older warmblood who has had a rough life reside with them. I would like to get him out of SoCal…he hates the heat and doesn’t do well in it. He does have some fetlock lameness and he’s not quite fat enough that I’d sit on him yet but my best guess is that he’d be fine for light riding but that is all. Honestly, I’d love for him to have a pet home…he’s been through Hell and he’s so happy to be safe now. Big galoot just lays his big old head in my arms for snuggles…E-mail Katie at Second Chance Ranch if you’re interested in giving Hoover a safe spot for the rest of his life.
The best part about doing the blog, bar none, has been the e-mails from readers thanking me for advice that helped them overcome a training problem or resolve a horse health issue, like a senior horse who needed to gain weight. I absolutely love those. I’m glad I could help. Right up there are the happy endings that I know took place for horses posted here for adoption. Some are in the most fabulous homes!
Here are some of the things I hope you have learned (if you didn’t already know them):
- Old horses are never skinny because they are old. Old horses that are skinny have a problem that can be fixed 99% of the time.- Slaughter is never the right answer. Slaughter provides a paycheck for irresponsible ownership and irresponsible breeding. Are there more horses than homes right now? You bet. The solution is the same sort of anti-breeding campaign that has worked VERY successfully in dogs and cats. I want to see this chart for horses, don’t you?
- There is no miracle about birth. Mosquitos breed. A thirty year old horse that is still in a great home and receiving excellent care…THAT is a miracle and something to be heartily applauded.
- That sick feeling in your stomach is NEVER wrong. If you feel it about a trainer, barn, etc. – RUN and take your horse(s) with you.
- Breeding animals responsibly isn’t easy. It actually takes a lot of research, knowledge and money. Most people should never breed an animal.
- Horses appreciate having a kind, fair, consistent leader — not a best friend that they can plow over and push around.
- That said, temper tantrums are counterproductive in everything from horse training to the job world. Learn to have self control. Not every impulse needs to convert itself into an action. Walking away is always better than losing it.
- Every time you think “oh, I should fix that, but it’ll be fine for tonight” — it won’t be. This is like a law of nature. Fix it tonight.
- Every time you think that something might be a bad idea, it is probably a bad idea. Remember the gal who tied the lead rope to her waist…
- The reason you have to report abuse or neglect is because horses and other animals can’t type or use the telephone. You are the only chance they have. Take pictures FROM THE ROAD…NEVER trespass. Go down to animal control or the sheriff’s and file a report. Call in a few weeks and follow up. If you fear you are being ignored, and that the situation is urgent, call your local media. Post to horsey message boards and blogs with the numbers to call to demand action. Getting a prosecution is a long, difficult but very rewarding road, especially when you see the horses safe in new homes that do take care of them.
- You cannot tell a rescue is good from their web site or Facebook page. Please support GFAS Accredited Rescues or rescues that you can visit in person (ideally, on a regular basis) and verify are taking proper care of their animals. Also look for a lot of before/after pictures proving the horse improved, as well as the ability to account for the whereabouts of horses adopted out years ago.
- You will not enjoy riding and your horse more from attending clinics or watching videos. You will enjoy riding and your horse more from riding a lot and taking lessons from a good trainer so that riding becomes easier and your ability to communicate with your horse improves. The better you ride, the less equine misbehavior you will experience. If you have fear issues, the #1 most valuable thing you can do to combat them is improve your riding, because that makes scary things happen less often.
- Also, on fear issues, allow me to quote something I read on Facebook and loved: “Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes. ~ William Gibson” Stop thinking you’re a shitty rider because your trainer is an insecure asshat who has to yell at and belittle students to make him/herself feel better. GET A NEW TRAINER.
- Turn-out is NOT optional. How well would you perform if you were locked in a shower stall whenever you weren’t at work? All horses need regular turn-out.
- Colic is 99% avoidable with daily turnout, regular rotational deworming (or fecals to determine what is needed), fresh and clean water available 24/7, a low stress environment, sand treatment if you’re in the sandy part of the country, and a consistent diet. If you are having colics frequently, figure out why.
- Proper conditioning is the #1 thing you can do to lower your vet bills and extend your horse’s useful life. When you do not ride all week and then go out on hilly trails for six hours on Saturday, do not come crying to me when your horse pulls a suspensory. That is like you trying to run 20 miles once a week after sitting in your recliner eating Ding Dongs the rest of the time … let’s see you do it. And folks, when your trainer is telling you in a lesson to push your horse past what YOU know your horse’s fitness level is, you have to say no. Ask yourself who will be paying the vet bill…will it be your trainer? Uh, no. So you have to have the guts to say, he’s tired, I want to quit now and cool him out. Even if he’s being bad, do something easy that he can get right, and then quit. There’s no value to making a training “point” that results in a horse that is out of commission for six months!
- It really is true…the vast majority of equine misbehavior results from pain. Before you punish, check for a sore back or neck, lameness, or dental problems. Check saddle fit, make sure the horse hasn’t been crammed into too-small shoes.
- Parents, put a helmet on your child every time they are on a horse. It is a long way down and all it takes is landing wrong to be a quadriplegic. When you are an adult, you can do as you see fit, and assume the risks you see fit, but a 5 year old cannot make those kind of adult choices. While we’re on the topic, stop overmounting your kid…the rest of us are all tired of watching in horror to see if the child will survive the parade on the jiggy horse who looks about to explode, or the hunter round on the horse who is clearly running off, or the barrel run on the horse who is bouncing off the arena walls like the meth head stripper on “Intervention” was bouncing off her room walls.
- No one person has all the answers when it comes to horses. Any of you might come up with an amazing solution to a training or health issue (or diagnose a pesky health issue that the vet couldn’t figure out). Read, read, read, and watch the trainers in your discipline whose horses are both performing well and seem happy (i.e. bright expression, happy ears, fluid movement, a general aura of enthusiasm while performing). I highly recommend The Horse for learning more about horse health. I also highly recommend the Chronicle of the Horse message board as a resource…you’ll find excellent information there.
- Finally, when you are between that proverbial rock and a hard place, and I know those situations happen, euthanasia is (100% of the time) a better solution than the auction. Yes, it will cost a few hundred dollars, so make the call while you still can, after you have made a true good faith effort to place the horse in a checked-out, proper home, but before you are down to your last $50 and your unemployment has run out. The only one who suffers when a horse is euthanized is his owner…he just goes to sleep. I never think of euthanasia as a tragedy. I always think of a horse being shoved onto a double-decker as a tragedy. Now I have three questions for you guys: 1) What was your favorite blog entry or topic here? For sheer entertainment, I do not think you can beat some of the Parelli stuff I had to comment on. I mean, how can you beat the Parellis telling someone to feed carrots to their biting horse? The only thing that isn’t funny about it is that, for example, a horse showed up in the Enumclaw kill pen a month or two ago that was required to go to slaughter because of how aggressive he was. Well, how do you think he got that way? 2) I also want to know what you think was THE fugliest horse ever posted here. I still say this is the winner:
To whoever bred this horse: You need a new hobby
3) And finally, if you have a horse that you adopted because you saw him/her on this blog, can you give us an update? Extra credit for before/after pictures!All right – let’s see if we can find a home for one more! This cutie pie is Cricket, at Shiloh Horse Rescue outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. I know someone is out there who would absolutely love this little mare.
Mrs. Pepin, you should have been a Fugly blog reader…
Yes, just another example where a lady who had two unrideable horses got scammed out of them by a shady dealer named Sandy Boudreau, aka Amy Adams, of Raven Rock Farm. Check out Ms. Boudreau’s pic – doesn’t she look like a nice lady? That is why you can’t go by what people look like when deciding whether to trust them with their horses. You, too, can be fooled. Ms. Boudreau seems to think she has done nothing wrong here but let’s start with, why do you even USE an alias if you are such an above-board, honest individual? Bullshit. I don’t walk around using aliases, and neither do any of you, do you, dear readers? You know who uses a fake name? People in the witness protection program … and criminals. I think it is a safe bet that Ms. Boudreau is not in the witness protection program, don’t you?
However, while I think it’s horrible that Boudreau didn’t say the following words to Mrs. Pepin BEFORE taking the horses on false pretenses, I am glad she said them in the newspaper for all to see:
“Ms. Boudreau said once the horse has been given to her, the owners can’t expect any more from her after that.
“First of all, I don’t want to be bothered,†she said. “I don’t want people hounding me over something where I am basically making no money. Why bother? If they sent the horse to rescue, they wouldn’t tell them that information, so why should I? So they can go and hound somebody else? Once they gave up the horse, they gave up the horse. If they didn’t want to do that, they shouldn’t have gone onto a public site to give it up. Not one person asked to see my farm or checked me out. They could have given it to Joe Blow or anybody else and they would be hounding that person. They never should have given their horses away if they felt so strongly. They should have kept them until they die or let them spend the money to put the horse down.â€
Yeah, she sounds like a bitch but she’s not wrong. Euthanasia would have been a lot kinder than what I am sure happened to those horses. Mrs. Pepin should have checked things out. She should have gotten a written contract. But like most people, she wanted to believe in a happy ending – no matter how unrealistic the odds were of that happy ending. Now she will feel guilty the rest of her life.
It’s not worth it. Look, no one enjoys holding the horse while the vet gives the shot, but even if you can’t do that, even if you walk away and let the vet handled it, you’re being so much kinder than letting the horse go out there to any fate at all. Giving your horse away free on Craigslist? You might as well open the pasture gate and let him run out.
It should not be news to you, as an adult, that people like Ms. Boudreau exist — YOU are what’s standing between your horse and that fate. Only you. Don’t drop the ball.
P.S. If you do not want to be hounded, I recommend NOT lying to people in order to pick up their free horses from Craigslist. Because it is amazing how often those stories make it into the media, whether that’s the newspaper or the Fugly blog. Just a helpful tip – don’t DO this crap and you won’t get “hounded” by the 99.9% of Americans who think you DID do something wrong here! And those of you who buy hunter/jumpers on the East coast, as always…vote with your wallets.
Heroic effort — or ego gratification?
In the comments a few days ago, during the Miracle story, several readers made the point that it wasn’t a good use of rescue resources to try to save a filly that far gone, and that the filly would never be normal. I argued back that Save A Forgotten Equine had a filly just that bad a few years ago, and that she had, indeed, made a full recovery. Coincidentally, SAFE just re-posted her story on their new site, so here you go if you missed it: And here is some newer footage of Miracle, chowing down! She will be going to Paradigm Farm to live her days in luxury as soon as she is ready. While I think that Whisper and Miracle (who has apparently decided to live also) were well worth saving, and I’d note that the cost of refeeding is not THAT great ($5 or $6 a day in Western Washington, probably even less in Georgia), there are certainly cases where I’d align myself with the skeptics and agree that a rescue (or a private individual!) has made a truly questionable decision in continuing to treat, rather than euthanize. For example, I have a pretty violent opposition to putting a prosthetic leg on a horse. A great deal of my opinion is the result of being the child of an occupational therapist and, as such, hearing a lot of stories about the challenges humans must face with a prosthesis. Basically, it’s damn near impossible to fit them properly. You lose or gain a little weight, now it doesn’t fit again. Sores and ulcers are common. Pain is a given. And as a human, you don’t have to stand on it all the time. Horses do. Getting up off the ground is awkward enough for a horse with two hind legs, and I can’t imagine how it works with a prosthesis back there. I worry that these horses are in a lot of pain, that no one will be able to keep up with the cost of keeping the stump cared for and the prosthetic fitted properly, and I worry that they can’t even lie down. Past that, let’s face it — these horses will never be good for a damn thing except as a pet, and I’m rather protective of the existing “pet” homes. I want those homes to be available for horses that have earned them…all the wonderful old, hard working horses that had shits for owners and wound up in a kill pen (See for reference Mugwump’s Auction Report). So, that factor plays into my thinking as well. Obviously the horse with a missing leg is the extreme case. Usually these cases of doing too much creep up on you. A horse colics and you call the vet. 24 hours later you have a vet begging you to allow surgery. You’re looking at a $5000 or more bill. The horse could survive. He could also die and then you (or your rescue) would just be out $5000. But you’re standing there with a vet looking at you like you’re Satan if you don’t spend the money, and I understand the temptation to cave. I personally have an absolutely-not policy with regard to colic surgery, so I’ve had that discussion numerous times where I tell the vet that we’ll do IV fluids, we’ll oil, I’ll walk, we’ll give pain meds, but there will be no surgery. It may be just my experience, but I have not seen good results. (I’ve never lost a horse to colic, either. Knocking wood.) However, would I consider a $5000 surgery to repair a leg problem that would most likely return the horse to competition sound? Sure. I’ve seen an annular ligament surgery, for example, where the horse came back 100% and is playing polo today, many years later. What if you have the surgery and you get a bad result and have a horse limping around in chronic pain? Do you do a second surgery? Do you euth? How much suffering can you justify, weighing it against the likelihood the animal will ever be pain free and/or able to do anything useful ever again? And have you seen cases (oooh boy I could go on all DAY about this) where a horse desperately needed to be euthed in your opinion but was being kept alive because the owner/rescuer could not detach emotionally, or because the owner/rescuer was basking in the glory of being told how wooooonderful they were for doing so much for the poor horse? Remember that fucktard Elliot Saffran? (My personal theory on the whole “ready to euth or not” thing is this: You, the emotionally invested person, can almost never make as good a decision as a herd of your knowledgeable friends. Ask them. I have had to do this myself. Any of us can fall prey to being too much in love with Horse X to do the right thing.) So tell me your stories. What have you seen that you think was heroic and truly resulted in a happy ending? What have you seen that you think was ego gratification and wasted a lot of money and ended badly?
And a further update on Ripley’s/Darlene Wilson
Exactly as was rumored – the only vet who definitely saw them while in Ripley’s care was a small animal vet. Good grief. Come on, it’s not THAT hard to figure out how to responsibly rescue large animals. You could learn just by reading this blog. If you can’t afford a vet, you don’t rescue. What in the world were the Ripley’s people thinking – and did they REALLY euth horses for being skinny and having lice, two extremely fixable conditions?
By the way, I have used Dr. Best as a vet and I think he’s great so when he says the horses were not in need of euthanasia, I’m pretty sure you can trust that.
Now here is my next question: What, right now, is the status of the horses that were NOT euthanized but are in Ripley’s custody? Who are they? Are they being offered for adoption? Will they *now* give some up to other rescues? What is going on?
I know I keep saying it, but darn, Shiloh’s Broadway is CUTE! I know that one of these days, someone is going to see her here and go get her, and I see a lot of ribbons in their future. She is near Las Vegas, Nevada, so not too far for all of you L.A. and Phoenix riders!
