In the years since horses have lived on my little "farm", there has been a long string of unreliable farriers. Then I found Vince via google search. At first I though maybe he was nefarious because he claimed to live in St George, Kansas but his phone number placed him in far western Kansas. Desperate I was, so I hired him. He has been trimming hooves here since. He treats my horses like they are my friends, not livestock.
My horses know the drill and cooperate with Vince, often almost falling asleep. There must be something quite comforting and pleasant to having your hooves trimmed and filed. It takes Vince all of ten minutes per horse, or less. He is usually here for about thirty minutes. It takes that long because we are talking. It is crazy that you can become friends with someone you only see four or five times a year for twenty minutes, but it happens.
The same veterinarian takes care of all my animals since I moved here, but he no longer looks after horses. Luckily for me, he hired a young woman veterinarian who does. It means my horses are not hit or banged around, or have twitches placed on them. If something dangerous needs to happen, like floating their teeth, they get tranquilizing injections, then nullifying injections to return them to normal - sort of. After a half hour or so, they resume their normal horse business with apparently no ill effects. No one is stomped, kicked, dragged away, and no horse is terrified or injured in a panicked outburst of bucking and rearing.
I got off on the spring schedule with the horses' yearly immunizations so now they are vaccinated in late November or early December. They get rabies, West Nile Virus, and I am not even sure what exactly the vaccines are for. Maybe I should know, but I simply trust that the vets know what they are doing in this matter. Kansas State Veterinary College is a mere 30 miles from here. The college and the area veterinarians work closely to stay current. In fact, all of the veterinarians I have ever taken any of my animals to are, without exception, graduates of Kansas State University.
The vet was here yesterday for an annual check up and the immunizations. Since the good doctor is a decades-younger, stronger woman than I, as well as being taller, I asked if she would also please administer the dewormer paste. It is for ridding horses of the parasites that plague them, and sold over the counter at the farm store. No horse alive appreciates the unimaginable horror and torture of having a small tube of goopy, awful tasting chemical substance squirted into their mouth. The secret it to just do it quickly before the horses have an inkling. Otherwise, they toss their heads up and I cannot reach them.
So, the Supreme Being Herself was not happy with the parasite treatment, and did not want to hold still for the immunizations administered into her neck, either. After a dance at the end of the halter rope, and some white-eyed pulling back, and escalating behavior that did not bode well for anyone, I took the rope. I stood next to my old friend and spoke quietly to her. She settled down immediately and did not even flinch when the Doctor stuck her with two needles.
I learned a lesson that I should have already known. My horses trust me not to let anything bad happen to them. And if people they do not know very well begin acting in suspicious ways, they are naturally going to behave defensively. The Supreme Being settled down immediately - even closed her eyes. The two inoculations were administered in less than a minute with not so much as a flinch. It warmed my heart and also broke my heart.
No one knows who will go first - me or the horses. I continually ask that I outlive both of my horses so that when their times come, they will be put down humanely, so they won't be sold for slaughter. The thought of my old friends suffering on the slaughter truck to some distant inhumane end, surrounded by the horror and fear of their terrified companions simply cannot be allowed. She was afraid of the gentle veterinarian and the young assistant. How terrified would she be at the hands of cruel men who will gladly crowd as many horses onto a truck as possible, never bothering to provide even water regardless of how many days they are on the truck in transport. These men do not care if horses are trampled on the truck, if they are sick or pregnant, young or old, sound or not. All it takes is for someone to not want a horse.
Once horse slaughter was effectively halted in the United States (2007), people who make a living from horses one way or the other, were angry. They claimed it ruined the horse industry since they could no longer easily dispose of unwanted horses. I am talking about people who breed horses for sale, who profess to love horses, but who have no compunction sending young horses to slaughter. They are perfectly healthy, just not conforming to breed standards or otherwise not marketable.
Horse slaughter has not been outlawed in the USA. The work-around is that the Federal Government no longer allows inspection of slaughter houses that process horses for consumption. Since meat that has not been inspected cannot be sold for food, then there is no market for dead horses. All horses that end up on the slaughter trucks go to Mexico or Canada, so it is a long, shameful, terrible end for horses that worked all their lives for farmers, or cowboys but are no longer sound or otherwise useful. Many are pregnant to add weight, upping their sale price by a few dollars. Many are injured or ill. Many are simply unwanted. It is a terrible end for horses, the selfless companions that carried our species into agriculture, warfare, and civilization.
If by some unimaginably evil twist of fate, either of my horses end up in Mexico or Canada, slaughtered and sold as food, just know that every summer they have been liberally sprayed with fly and tick repellant that has a warning label to not use on horses intended for consumption. They have been given annual vaccines and stuffed with ivermectin twice a year every year. So, go ahead. Bon Appetit!
Did I mentioned ivermectin - that miracle "medicine" that some online folks argue quite ferociously saved them from covid? They also swear it neutralizes cancer despite the fact that there is zero scientific evidence that it has any effect on cancer whatsoever. It is given to humans for the same reason it is given to horses: internal parasites.
The world has gone off the rails - on a crazy train. Difficult to stay sane but better than believing in a flat earth or that ivermectin cures cancer. Who is making up these crazy fairytales?
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Map of the Flat Earth can be bought from Amazon for $21.95 plus shipping and handling. |
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