Posted 2006-12-07 7:30 PM (#52294 - in reply to #52268) Subject: RE: Seeing is ????
Member
Posts: 21
Location: Burleson, TX
I am glad there is better enforcement where you are and I commend you for working to make horses safer. Here in Texas, we need to have this same action taken at auctions. I bought three PMU mares at the well-known and advertised auction in Magnolia near Houston last January. This facility holds regular weekly auctions. The stalls were filthy and wet. The water was contaminated with feces and hay. The stalls were generally damaged and had rusty exposed edges of broken pipes, etc. The horses were grouped in twos and fours per stall and kicking by aggressive horses was not stopped by moving them to separate areas. I saw one horse obviously suffering from a beating. His eyes rolled in terror every time anyone came within 10 feet of him. Several horses who had been shipped in from Canada a couple days earlier were coughing and showing obvious signs of distress and fever. I spoke to some local people who frequent this auction and was told the horses who go through there always get sick from strangles or some other problem. The ones I bought all came down with severe shipping fever since they came 2000 miles from Canada to this auction. At another auction in Hill County south of Cleburne, there is a little hole in the wall weekly auction where conditions are nearly as bad as described above. I was there a couple months ago and saw horses and foals so starved that they could hardly stand. The owner would have been in big trouble had these horses been seen in his pasture two minutes before he loaded the dying creatures in his trailer to come to the sale, but once at the sale...no problem. An employee of the facility was "training" a horse for the sale. He whipped, spurred, and yanked on him until his mouth was bleeding from hitting it on the fence as he was turned into it repeatedly. the horse was so beside himself he could not think what in the hell the rider wanted of him. I got so mad I told the strapping man on his back if he ran him face first into the fence again I would do my best to drag him off the horse and beat the s*** out of him! I am an older overweight lady but he must have realized I'd give it a try. He gave me an angry look and got off the horse. When that horse came through the sale an hour later, he went to the killer when he freaked out when the same guy tried to ride him to show him off. I saw a horse with a broken leg that obviously had not had care for a long time. The poor animal was in agony. I can only imagine the trailer ride and being driven in/out of the ring. I could go on the describe two other auctions where mares with foals only weeks old were separated from their babies and sold individually. The likelyhood of a foal two/three/four weeks old surviving without lasting effects is limited. These are all in different counties. In all the years I have gone to auctions off and on, I have never seen any enforcement. Now, these were run of the mill auctions where lower class horses are found, but that should not mean their suffering is meaningless. You are right that I should have made a lot of protests. I did ask around about it and was told it is an area hands off for the most part or the auctions don't get the business they need every week and business owners have pull with local politics.
Posted 2006-12-08 12:45 AM (#52306 - in reply to #52245) Subject: RE: Seeing is ????
Expert
Posts: 1871 Location: NY
I always start off asking a question?? Is the horse supost to look like that ?? may be there are thursty?? If the person tells me to move on then all beats are off!!
Seeing is ????
