I guess I am having a hard time with you wanting to protect the owner when you know multiple horses are suffering from laminitis. The horses need to be cared for or euthanized and you know that and want advice on how to sleep at night.
Call the humane society or other local animal agency and take the decision out of the owners hands.
This is interesting. May be what I was looking for.
It’s not about protecting the owner. It is perhaps a little about protecting myself from a rubber-necking-forum-drama-feeding-frenzy. But mostly, it’s about what could actually maybe make things better.
The whistle-blowing option is not off the table. The sucky part, and this is the information you were missing, is that I have seen for myself, close-up and multiple times the local agency in action. I have some idea of their policies and resources. They cannot fix or even improve this situation.
If you know otherwise, that’s great news! Educate me, or at least inspire me with a true story about when this has happened. Until then whistleblowing is the last resort: it will burn all bridges because there is no chance of remaining anonymous, and after that I will be able to do nothing more at all.
Therefore, and to be clear, guilt over complicity through silence, is not what keeps me awake nights. What troubles me, like it does you and other responders, is empathy for the animal suffering.
Incidentally Zip has improved a little since his first crash. Better mobility and softer eyes. Finally after I talked to the owner, he and the others have been now been restricted in their diet. Two drops in the bucket. So for now I’ll continue to chip away at the problem from the inside as it were, i.e., talking to the owner; or, to offer another example, I was able to make a dramatic improvement to the comfort of another horse by giving it a good trim. It’s really gratifying and worth every drop of patience for the creaky old things, to see the posture correct itself and the straining muscles soften as the trim progresses.
If I thought labelling, outing, othering, or vilifying would help, I might go there. But they won’t, because the problem is not just this one “hoarder,” is it. How did this mannerly line-bred old show gelding end up here, after all? And all the other abandoned and surrendered? That’s the real trainwreck.
Am I being defensive? Arrogant? Stubborn? Maybe that’s what I needed in order to stay in the trenches a little longer. Eventually, as one early responder said, the tiny wins won’t be enough and for my mental health I’ll have to abandon ship. Like all those former owners did, come to think of it. That will suck in its own way for all kinds of reasons. But tonight at least I’ll go give another starfish 6 more weeks of comfort, kiss my pet projects, and miss my old friend who’s gone.
You can’t fix that now. You have what is in front of you today. If this truly is 75 under cared for horses…you report it. News, AC, representatives, etc.
ETA: how many individuals enabled this guy to collect 75 head after all?
How do I report “under-cared for” to News, representatives etc? Not meant sarcastically: educate me as to method and purpose. I already wrote about AC. Opportunity is still there for someone to tell me how that’ll be more helpful than my enabling.
At any rate, they are not all 75 of them under-cared for, I think that’s an inference. I said that the owner was up against the limits of his resources, which is a little different. Everyone will be glad to know the majority are healthy. Some as I said got low-grade laminitis I think because of sugar in the feed, and one got acute and wasn’t getting the care I wanted for him.
Was your ETA a hypothetical parthian shot? I couldn’t tell. If not, here’s the tally: 75-ish ppl who surrendered or abandoned these horses, plus prior horses’ ppl. Plus AC when they brought horses they had no room for. Minus the ppl who have adopted horses from there. Plus other volunteers who clean poops and waterers. Or is that a minus? Minus(?) vets who have treated animals and donated time. How about sponsors and donors, are they pluses or minuses? The problem with enabling is, it’s very layered. Otherwise it’d just be called contributing. When that term comes up, I think, wouldn’t it be great if the innocents weren’t the hardest hit victims of tough love?
Maybe I should instead tell about (focus on) the good things happening there, like the seniors who get their special soaked meals. The 3-day dental clinic. The rehab and rehome stories. The starvation rescues. The colic surgery recoveries. The social blossoming of horses learning about herd life after the relative isolation and confinement of servitude for sport. But that’s not newsworthy is it. (Yeah that was sarcastic).
This has been an interesting, helpful, difficult and exhausting discussion. Thank you to all for writing. I’m going to step out of the thread now unless someone offers a significantly different perspective.
I have to say, colic surgery on an aged horse in a situation where resources are tight is not a good use of cash. Most owners of low dollar older horses don’t drop $15,000 on surgery. I realize however that emergency colic surgery is a great emotional fundraiser for rescues and done right may be a campaign that raises much more than the surgery cost.
As far as the culpability of owners who send their aged horses to this sanctuary, clearly the sanctuary is promising a blissful retirement that we would all want for our horses. The reality may be otherwise, but if everyone associated with the sanctuary contributes to keeping up appearances, how is the owner of the aged horse to know the truth?
I typed and deleted a whole novel but I unfortunately have had some experience with care quality at retirement farms recently. To summarize: this type of facility isn’t going to have the standards that you and I have. Suggesting changes that are not realistic is just going to get your whole message ignored and emotionally exhaust you with the effort you put in. High sugar hay giving the herd some kind of sub clinical laminitis that would have to be addressed by care and management for which there are no resources isn’t on the table. For Zip, who is immediately having a concern about quality of life and is not getting appropriate veterinary care, you need to insist that a vet sees the horse who is having an emergent medical need. You can voice your concerns to the vet and let them explain to the owner how much pain the horse is in.
How you sleep at night is that you remind yourself that the alternative here is not that the horses are cared for to the standards you have for your own, unless these horses have owners who are not informed and would potentially do more if given the opportunity. Your job is to advocate for basic quality of life with the resources that are available and set the boundaries you can set. My suggestion would be that you say that you can only support an organization with volunteer work that aligns with your values, one of which is that horses experiencing a medical emergency need to have vet care. Then you ask how you can help make that happen.
Before you go, could you please answer my question from my previous post ? It read “Where is the vet that treats these horses ? Has he/she been contacted ?”
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