[QUOTE=danceronice;4949785]
The horse doesn’t have papers, deserve them, or care about them. The horse cares, inasmuch as that is possible, about having decent food and water in front of it this instant and not feeling in immediate danger. It does not know or care if it is registered, it has no sense of self in that respect, it does not know what was or was not going to happen to it. Horses don’t know what breed they are or what a registry is. Don’t anthropomorphize.
The problem is not that horses bought out of feedlots are inherently crap. The problem is someone suddenly acting entitled to the perks of buying a registered horse with value in its name who can produce offspring that are salable as registered animals when they bought an unknown cull off a cheap auction. Especially when there are specialized limited papers available that don’t seem to be good enough for some reason (which does kind of indicate the new owner suddenly sees a profit, because if all they want to do is show then having papers that don’t permit racing or breeding STB offspring shouldn’t be a problem.) They are making noise about “outing” an owner who’s done nothing illegal for not wanting an animal they produced bred or used as a racehorse. If they wanted a registered Standardbred, they should have bought one, and gee, maybe a breeder somewhere would have had a market for a cull instead of giving it away to someone who turned around and sold it per pound. They didn’t do that. They bought a god-knows-what out of a kill pen so they could feel good about themselves and so hopefully this horse could lead a productive life. The horse certainly can–papers do not magically make it rideable, they don’t make it well-conformed, and except in the unlikely event she’s going in ONE class at ONE show mentioned by name thus far, she doesn’t need USTA papers or to be able to race and produce racing foals do it.
People come on this forum and berate breeders for not taking responsibility and this one feels the horse is, for whatever reason, NOT a good candidate for racing and should not contribute to the breed’s gene pool. You honestly would rather the horse be dead? Because where I’m sitting, dead is dead, so if it’s better they be killed than not have papers might as well slaughter them for something–human food, dog food, whatever. Chemical euthanasia’s a waste of biomass, and the horse has no concept of death or post-mortem decay any more than it does papers, so it certainly doesn’t care. Maybe this breeder, again, should find a local hunt. Culls would probably go a long way to feeding hounds. Cull them fairly young and you wouldn’t have to worry about the drugs in the meat, either. Apparently no one wants to pay money for them unless it’s to a broker who is going to use that purchase price to buy another grade animal to stick on the truck, so someone might as well get some use out of them and then they won’t have to worry about being “outed” by someone who bought one of their horses from someone else and is now demanding they hand over papers so they can…race her? Breed her? Because that’s what the papers are for. They’re not horsey self-esteem certificates, they don’t keep horses out of slaughterhouses, and they don’t magically make a mare who isn’t a good candidate for racing and breeding suddenly worth something. They just make her uterus available for creating more registered offspring to sell who may or may not end up right back where she did.
The new owner should either contact USTA and see about getting the limited pleasure registry and accept that you don’t buy a Rosalind or Greyhound out of a kill pen, or just deal with having a grade mare, which is exactly what they thought they bought in the first place.[/QUOTE]
What makes you think that these breeders withheld papers because they did not want the horse bred or raced? They gave away a horse that is registered and without papers because they did not want their name associated with the horse when it ended up where it did. Moral, legal? What are you talking about? Where in the law does it say if you did not buy papers with the horse at auction that you do not have any rights to them? As far as preventing the breeding of the horse, again, what are you talking about? People breed horses without papers all of the time, all you are preventing is having a registered horse. I don’t get why this bothers you so much that someone would want the papers. On every horse that I took off the track, mare, gelding or stallion, I wanted the papers and I also passed them along every single time because I want someone to know the horses’ history. I won’t even comment on the silly business about the horses’ not caring about their papers. I care and clearly others care very much as well they should.
You seem to be awfully vindictive about this for some reason that I do not understand, and I am paraphrasing, ‘they bought a horse out of a kill pen because they wanted to feel good about themselves’? Is this why you do or did that? To feel good about yourself? I am missing something here, and should think that if you are concerned about the welfare of the horse that you would want it to have every advantage that it can have especially if there is some kind of paper trail on the animal. You never know when you might find someone from that animal’s past who may help if it is in danger and you may just make someone extremely happy that there was that option to find them. The registries can certainly make it possible that the animal cannot be raced if they want to, and they could even make it possible that the animal could not have a registered foal if they wanted. I think changes in that direction could only help out all of the registered animals. We have spent centuries on developing the purebred registries, we should certainly utilize all of the wisdom from those years and make better futures for them all.
