And yet, you lived to tell the story.
I think that the humane slaughter of animals is not an ideal solution: but, it is prefereable to the interim situation, of allowing them to strave slowly to death, or suffer injury when destitute owners turn them loose, to run into highways or other risky situations. I guess we have all read or heard of farmers waking up to find they had "inherited" several starving equines in the night.
Our daughter is a certifiable horse nut. I have lost count of how many animals she has fostered and found new homes for, in this one small, sparsely-populated area. She has helped our county's humane officer to remove and foster animals needing care.
She had previously done this for them to await ajudication, but refuses that option now, because the courts rarely order fair restitution for her costs. Even when ordered, the problem was blood out of stones, you know?
Now, she will only do a rescue when the custiody of the animals is totally surrendered to her, at the taking by the officer. That way, she can put weight on them, find them a home, and not cost herself too much to make the work worthwhile.
Her last effort was involving an equine rescue league, which can have its own issues. While I think a lot of rescue organizations have good intentions, they sometimes fall prey to one paricular kind of control freak, who makes it harder for everyone to actually get the job done.
They set up impossible conditions, which is in essence their way of controlling forever where a horse goes and to whom. The recordkeeping requirements they set up alone are offputting.
The transition of horses, from work animals to companions, is the crucial divider in the way we treat them. People often mean well, but are mistaken, in how they assess the best disposition of an animal that has reached an age or condition which renders it with no real quality of life.
I have known my daughter to march a horse into a dozer hole and have teh vet put it down, rather than watch it suffer. Sometimes lots of money down the drain, but she loved them too much to keep hanging onto them...knew it was unfair to the animal. It is a lesson that she started learning when she was about five, with a pet chicken.
America needs to grow up....
