Owning a horse is a hole in your pocket that you dump money in. We already have two old seniors that are too old and sick to ride. We have checked on having them put down when they no longer have that shine in their eye, their ears pricked up and they are telling me that they are done. It will be expensive. A farm call is $75, to euthanize them is $125 each and we found a man that will pick them up and bury them for $250 each. So just for them to die will be $825. It would be much cheaper to take them to the sale and get a couple hundred bucks apiece and send them on their way. Joe and Sparkles gave me the best years of their life and if I am nothing else, I am loyal. There is no way that I could put my two friends on a truck to Mexico to be slaughtered. My husband feels the same way that I do. We'll suck it up, do what has to be done, pay for it and cry our eyes out.
For people who maybe don't feel the way I do about their old horses (and there are lots of them, the kill pens are full of broke down old horses) or maybe they just can't afford it and getting a few hundred bucks is better than spending money they don't have, slaughter is the answer. I am not against slaughter, I am against the bleeding heart do-gooders that got horse slaughter shut down in the USA. It moved to Mexico and Canada. It now involves a long ride to a holding pen, followed by another long ride to slaughter. I am sure that in Mexico there is not a lot of laws for animal welfare. I have read some pretty horrible accounts of how horse slaughter is carried out. Congratulations to the idiots who made it worse. Maybe it is better regulated in Canada, I hope so.
Comments on the Facebook pages of the kill pens trend toward getting it outlawed to even ship the horses out of the country. That means that horses will starve to death, be turned loose to run up and down the roads or shot by desperate owners with nowhere to go with unwanted horses. The man that owns the kill pen where we got Pearl said that during the 2 year drought we had here in Texas a few years back, he shipped 40 loads a week to slaughter. A load is 30-35 horses. People had no grass, hay was brought in from other states and was $125 a round bale on the low side and up to $250 for a single round bale. Horses were taken to auction where nobody but the kill buyers wanted them.
There is no easy answer. I would like to see horse slaughter brought back to the US where it could be regulated to be as humane as possible, but nothing will ever satisfy the idiots who scream animal cruelty.
I will shut up now. Rant not over, I am still ranting in my mind.
