I first heard about this episode from reading the Woodend Farm Blog last week. I DVR’d it with the intention of watching it whenever I thought I could stomach the material. My beautiful Gennyral was supposed to be sold at auction because he was “a dangerous horse” when my trainer stepped in and said it would be a liability to the county (yes, a country run riding stable was the one doing this) to sell him at auction and asked if they would give him to her for free. They were reluctant at first (the manager was brand new. Her first act was to get rid of Genny) but after a little pressure from the current workers my trainer got him.
As you all know Gennyral had to be retired last year when he was 15. It was my choice to fight for his life, no one would have blamed me if I put him down. I didn’t want to and lucky for me he was able to recover and now lives a very posh life as a pasture pet. I do not regret my decision one bit. It was worth it to me. Every now and again though I start to think “what would my life be like now without a special needs horse”. This does not happen often, and I need to reiterate that I am happy with Gennyral and the decisions I made, it is just one of those what if things. Like thinking about an ex-boyfriend when you find out they just graduated medical school. You know there is a reason you broke up, but it is fun to think about being a doctors wife if things turned out differently. I would have much more money right now without my horse. It is not cheap to keep a horse in my area…my board is less then the average for here but it is still more then what some people pay at a show barn with 2 indoors in other parts of the country. I would be able to travel, not that I am all about traveling, but sometimes when my parents come back from 3 weeks on a tropical island all tan and happy I think to myself “I could leave for weeks at a time if I didn’t have a horse”.
I made myself watch this show because a big part of me never wants to get another horse ever again. I tell myself that half-leasing one horse or another would be enough. Part of me knows that it isn’t true though. In good times, and in bad, I still love to own my horse. To be able to make decisions without having to get someone elses permission first. I think I am a decent horse owner for the most part and I figured that if I watched this show it might make me want to try ownership again at some point by seeing what happens to horses who don’t have people that love them.
The horse slaughter section of the show is the second one. It starts off at the track and then you come to meet a woman who used to be an assistant trainer there. She starts talking about what goes on and Real Sports was actully able to get footage of a horse being loaded onto a buyers trailer (by being beaten with a pole mind you) and as the story goes on you follow this horse. From the track, to the buyers trailer, and then one day later at the auction where this poor mare is sold to be meat. It is hard to watch. She is shinny and full of life but no one cared. She was only sold for a few hundred dollars. Less then one months worth of board for my horse.
What is worse is they show you how the horses get slaughtered on this episode. It made me want to throw up and I could not watch all of it. Especially when one horse would not go down easily so they just hung that horse up while it was still alive. Just typing it out makes me feel sick to my stomach. I had to remind myself that I am not a vegetarian. At all. And that cows go through the same thing so I need to get over it since I have a lovely beef stew in the crock pot for dinner. The worst image I saw though was not in the horses dying, but rather watching a paint horse hide come off a conveyor belt covered in blood.
It was a hard 15 min of TV to watch. The whole segment was the reality of what happens and sometimes that reality is just hard to swallow. The focus shifts to a rescue in PA that goes to the auctions themselves and buys as many horses as they can from the meat packers. I am not sure where in the state the auction horse is but who knows…that easily could have been the auction house Gennyral was headed for. This rescue looked really nice and they have been able to adopt out over 200 horses in the past few years. In another state the woman who was the assistant trainer at the start of the story gave up life on the track to save those poor ponies who are doomed.
The journalism was great. The stories were all touching, although not all in a happy way. They packed a lot into that 15 minute segment. It is hard to watch, trust me on that one, but I really do think people should see it. I am still not sure I will ever own another horse. I am sure that what I saw today reminded me that as much of a pain in the butt my horse is I still love him to bits and pieces and am so glad that he is mine. He never has to worry about going to the meat packers ever again.
A Horse and a Half 