All the Creatures

Unfortunately with the economy on a down slide and quite a few people are finding themselves out of work they have to find ways to cut back on expenses. The pet horse is almost always the first pet to suffer since the horse is considered by many to be a luxury to own. Not because you have to have land to keep it on, but many city dwelling owners have their horses boarded and that costs about $300.00 a month and up per horse. My husband has even noticed that there were ads in the local horse magazines that were giving horses away. Some people just can’t afford to keep them anymore.

When horse owners put out ads that state “free horse” all kinds of people crawl out of the woodwork. I will say it once, never “give” your horse away for free unless you know the person (and can trust them) to who you are giving the horse to. There have been many horse traders/dealers who will show up at your door with their kids and say the horse will have a great family home. The minute the “family” gets the horse, the horse is put on a trailer and sold to the closest slaughter house or feed lot for cash.

I am not going to bash people for trying to find a home for their horse whether they give it away or sell it but I do have a few helpful links. Two fellow horse industry bloggers are putting up names and maybe pictures of the people that pull stunts like the one I mention above. The direct links are below and I hope that they come in useful for you or someone you know selling a horse.

Dealers who ship horses to kill

TB Freinds Horse Rescue

All the Creatures

Since the USA has now closed all of the slaughter facilities that slaughtered horses, the practice is now booming in Canada and Mexico. Our USA horses are now being shipped across both north and south borders for slaughter in those countries. The federal government has passed laws to make it illegal to slaughter horses in the USA for human consumption. That in my opinion was a mile stone for the USA government, but they failed to take into account the possibility of shipping horses across the borders.

Canada is fairly competent when it comes to humanly killing a horse for meat but I am hearing horror stories out of Mexico. Mexico it seems is not killing the horses very quickly. Their method is to repeatedly stab the horse in the withers at the base of the neck to cut the spinal cord. This is not to kill the horse but to render the horse paralyzed. This takes several long minutes while the horses are repeatedly stabbed with a short knife. When the horse finally falls down their back legs are hooked to chains and they are hoisted up until they dangle off the ground - still alive. At that point their throats are cut so they can bleed to death. This method is the one that European meat buyers will buy horse meat. The animal has to be bled to death.

In my humble opinion we need to make it very expensive to export a horse outside of the USA through high export fees or expensive permits. That way it would take some of the monetary incentive out of exporting horses for slaughter. If it cost the companies that do this type of trafficking too much money in fees to swing a profit then the export of horses outside of the USA borders might end.

All the Creatures