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[QUOTE=The Anonymous Foxhunter;8377288]
With respect, because we are all trying to find a solution that works for horses, and for those of us who enjoy them, I fall into the category of people who opine that if you can’t afford $200 to euthanize a horse and another $300 to bury it/have it taken away to the renderers’, you had no business owning a horse in the first place. I have been present when my veterinarians and I made the decision to euthanize a dozen (well, in two cases there was no other option). In an incredibly urgent situation in a very suburban, expensive area, the burial cost $500 – the guy dropped everything and drove his tractor down the local highway to bury the horse before the afternoon lesson kids arrived. In the rural central Virginia area where I presently dwell, I was charged $175 to bury a horse this past August.
Regarding the cost of euthanasia, the alternative of a well-placed bullet, however gruesome it may seem, is humane, cheap, and it would not have been difficult to find a skilled person in Orange County, Virginia, willing to dispatch these doomed animals in this manner, probably for almost nothing. That’s assuming that the area veterinarians wouldn’t have done it for free rather than watch this suffering (the vets working this case with whom I’ve spoken are shattered, and there are some tough oldtime horsemen types among them).
Again, I mean my comments only with respect. We are all upset about this entire situation and it is good to have these discussions to prevent it from happening again.[/QUOTE]
I agree with what you say above. I put figures out there to prompt a discussion of costs. But whatever the cost, we incurred the responsiblity for them when we bred or acquired the horse.
It seems to me that like all issues related to death, we tend to avoid the topic, but a horse is a luxury. If you can not afford to provide for one, don’t acquire one.
Too many people see the horse in terms of a “commodity” they will use for a small window of time and then discard. And then it is “out of sight / out of mind.”
When was the last time “end of life issues” were even discussed at the time of purchase? I think too many buyers see horses in terms of what the horse will do for them, with no regard for their responsibilities to the horse.
We need to calmly intelligently discuss how to deal with end of life issues. We have to have ways to humanely deal with this. I can see that there is the fear that an animal would be destroyed merely for convenience, and it may happen, so we have to decide when and how to address that, but we can’t disallow humane slaughter just because society, fueled by a Walt Disney version of realty, thinks that all old horses will find loving forever homes “in the country.”
We can not rely upon “the other guy” to solve problems for us, nor can we depend upon government agents, who often lack optimal training, education, supervision, experience and judgment. And most of all, we can not allow self agrandising politicians - who are profoundly ignorant of the issue - to push idiotic knee-jerk reaction laws that really only make things worse. We who own horses and understand the complexities of this issue should generate solutions.
There are countries in Europe, some about the size of Ohio, that each year breed more than ten times the number of Warmbloods we do in the USA as a whole, yet they are not overrun with aged and out of service horses. I think they have an ethic that allows for humane euthanasia. And I don’t think all of those horses end up in a grave.
