My wife got into horses- Oh man this is starting out rough! My wife started her horse addiction last winter. She stumbled onto a discussion group called Auction Horses, at http://auctionhorses.proboards.com/
I was opposed to the idea from the very beginning. The motivation behind my opposition is that I hold it to be true that the less responsibilities I have the more I can focus on sitting around, not doing anything. Which is the point to life, as far as I'm aware. The pattern of compromises - or breakdowns (depending on how you look at it) include but are not limited to: taking horse riding lessons, to leasing a horse (where I assumed it would end because of the daily removal of horse shit), joining a local rescue organization - which turned into starting one when no suitable local organization could be found. Her organization can be found at:
It turns out that I like horses, they are a lot like giant dogs, only smarter and if you are cool enough and not too much of a dick weed they'll let you climb on their backs and take you pretty much wherever you want to go. Also ... they speak a language that is similar to Dog, except they are averse to movement, and really - quick movement, in certain vectors in and around the face area. It turns out I like cleaning stalls. It's like painting a wall (I was a house painter from 1992 to 2005). Stall cleaning seems to fill a hole in my art.
The Sunday after TMR (the subject of the Blog prior to this one- roughly) was the Eugene horse auction. It happens on the second Sunday of every month.
TANGENT
Anna and her friends Erin Stangel (Stangelectronic) went to the one in July and it was emotionally traumatizing to Erin and I think maybe for Anna too. So I promised I go to the one in August. Which turned out to be much better. There are horses at this and other auctions throughout the United States of America that are purchased for the sole purpose of being fattened at a feed lot and shipped to Canada or Mexico.In order to be rendered as meat for consumption by humans, primarily Europeans. I shit you not. You can look it up. I know you're on the internet right now. Wikipedia that shit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_slaughter). I should probably state here that I try to not eat meat and generally I don't buy meat. If it is served to me, I'll eat it or if it is going to be thrown away, I'll eat it. But my caloric intake is high enough that meat is a luxury my body can do without. I also try to be Vegan but I'm lazy and when I think about the consequences of my choices (consuming meat,eggs, cheese and milk) I see the suffering it causes and am saddened by it. I also generally don't like killing things or otherwise causing things to suffer. Anyway, at The Auction in July, there was a guy that makes a living buying horses and shipping them to Canada for meat. He made several purchases of horses that were usable, riding horses. Anna did get involved in saving a horse, she helped a young lady, Kelly Brantley of Eugene, score a sweet horse at auction betting against the dude who buys horses in order to kill them so that they can be eaten by people. We went to the Auction in August and that dude wasn't there. All the horses went to places that we estimate to have the intention of minimizing suffering, but who really knows what curses Jesus chooses to reign down on us.
COTANGENT
The Sunday after TMR (the topic of my last Blog - in which I forgot to give props to my Uncle Dan for turning 50 and my Aunt Loraine for staying married to his honky ass for 25 years) Anna and I went to the Eugene horse auction. The entire morning, really the entire Men's retreat weekend, I was bitching to anyone that would give me 5 seconds about this whole horse thing. Slaid Cleaves wrote a song called "Horses" that goes something like "If it weren't for horses and divorces. I'd have a lot more money and less gray hair. I might even be a millionaire." I had just seen him play it on Friday night.
I've been worried about getting a horse, and still am, but that's okay. I hold it to be true that, it is good for me to be worried about the welfare of the beings I assume rely upon my labor for survival and/or well being. Anna had been talking about the horse she leases, Roxy, and how Roxy gets a saddle sore on her withers when she's ridden. The sore is from starvation and neglect prior to being adopted by Debbie Blando of Fenmere Farms in Dallas, the stable owner that gives us lessons. Anna feels guilty about riding Roxy and giving her the sore, so she'd brought it up to me a week or so before that she was considering getting a horse. She's been working as pharmacist this summer and will be working every other weekend during school. I've got obligations elsewhere that prevent me from considering being the capital behind this adventure. So anyway, we are at the horse auction and were running around getting to know all the horses and I'm checking out all the one's without papers and without descriptions. The ones that are probably going to be coming through the auction and are not going to be purchased by typically motivated buyers because they have a higher degree of uncertainty. Anna asks me to go to Costco with Stangelectronic so that she can get the Costco price on their bomb ass dog food and as I'm rolling out, I'm walking and talking to the co-founder of http://www.valleyhomelesshorse.proboards.com Kim Jenkins and we see this horse that some lady is bringing in. Kim says "oh that's too bad, look at that little guy, why do people do that, it just makes me mad!" At first glance he looked like a young horse that just never got fed. It would be very hard luck case if you were, like, a yearling that's been starved and has no training and you show up at an auction. So I take off for Costco and on my way back I get a call from Anna saying that we've got a horse. And the auction hasn't even started.
The lady that brought the horse in hadn't told the auction people that the horse was a bag on bones. They weren't going to let him go through the auction. The dude that buys horse to feed to people wouldn't even buy this horse because there's not enough meat on him. The lady said that she didn't do it, starve the horse, and that she's tried to put weight on him but that he was just a poor doer. But that she'd owned him before and sold him to somebody only to wind up checking him out a couple of months later where she found hin like this. She took him back. She also told Anna she had a vet come take a look at him and that the vet had said he had organ damage and that he needed to be put down. She indicated to Anna that the Vet hadn't done any blood work but just knew by looking at him. She said he was about 20 or 25 and that he's been on a drill team (horse drill is a choreographed horse performance with flags and a bunch of horses - this link is sufficiently entertaining on multiple levels). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM6o-YLlrL8
Anna said that she'd take him. The lady gave Anna $30 to take the horse. We were going to call him Conor like Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes fame - because he's like a skinny emo kid
His name is now Starvin' Marvin - yes as in "Mom, we kind of found an E3nopean. Can we keep him?"
Starvin' Marvin
Starvin' Marvin
When the auction started one of the first horses to go was a nice horse, her name was Bonnie, she was about 15 or so and she was calm, and friendly to people. I have no idea if she was broke to ride. I do know she had a halter, was in a stall with no food or water but that she wasn't tied to the rail. She didn't seem to bite, kick, pester her neighbors, chew on the rail or dig. When I went into her pen she didn't bite at me, kick at me, whinny, or try to push me around, nor did she run away, pull her ears back, or put her back to me. She lifted up her feet when I asked her to. She sold to the man who takes horses to Canada, kills them and feeds them to people for $10. I didn't know who he was, he looked like a nice old man that maybe had a place and wanted a nice horse. You can't save them all and you can't do more than you can. As I like to say and my brother in-law likes to repeat back to me: You do what you can, you can what you do. Sometimes you call it marde de artist and sell it for the price of gold.
There was a guy at the auction and he was adamant that this horse (Starvin' Marvin) would not put on weight he told us he knew the horse, he'd heard the horse was about 30 and if we needed his services he shoots horses and takes them out to feed to cougars. My theory is that he likes to kill things and so this might be his hobby. He tends to wear clothing indicating that he is a member of a segment of our society that takes pride in being very well trained to kill the greatest number of people in the most efficient possible manner. I don't know if he's a member of the USMC or whether he just likes to wear the t-shirt. I actually consider the latter more perverse.
Anna came to the auction with a mission, to get a very well trained horse to ride, at a very good price. She found a very nice horse, one with papers. A 9 year old quarter horse that's spent the last two years working cattle. The rancher was just looking to get rid of him, "got too many horses" ... apparently ... and "this one isn't the best at cattle work, he's fine at it just not as good as some of the others."
Mars
We had the vet come by and look at the horses. He says that Mars looks good, he could use about 50 lbs so we've added a little corn oil to the grain. He's a huge horse, If I recall correctly weights about 50 lbs more than a 1/2 a ton. He's about 16 hands.
Starvin' Marvin weighed 657 lbs and is 14.2 Hands. The blood work came back good, no liver or kidney damage. He looks better already. We put him on alfalfa hay and a little bit of grain, and put them both on a multi-vitamin for horses. Oh and it turns out he's only 12 or so. His teeth are real worn like he's been chewing the nutrition out of rocks trying to survive - there's a line that works its way down the lateral teeth starting at about ten - if I recall the Vet correctly, and Starvin' Marvin's line is still near the gum line.
Anna's got a horse to ride that doesn't get saddle sores. When they canter it looks like a horse you'd see in the movies. Starvin' Marvin is like a dog. I'm teaching him to come when I whistle for him and to follow behind me without a line, neither of which is hard to do. Treats work really well to motivate a starving horse. We weighed him yesterday and he weighs about 690, still 14.2 hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment