"Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody's business to interfere when they see it."

~Anna Sewell

Thursday, August 26, 2010

This just made me ill.

Sometimes love just ain't enough, that's why we have vets!

That whole thing is a very sad state of affairs. Mostly for the poor pony. Here are my two cents on this:

First of all, I do not blame the girl for the pony's death. She's a kid, and she can't pay vet bills. Her parents are ultimately responsible for making sure her animals are looked after, because they are the adults. She obviously keeps her horse at a boarding facility where there are plenty of other people around. No one else's horses were skinny, so you'd think that would give her a clue. You'd also think that SOMEONE would notice Pony's spine sticking out and say something to the girl and/or her parents. Where was the stable owner when this was going on? Where was the instructor? What the bloody hell were her parents thinking??? From start to finish, this lasted less than a year. Pony was healthy and perky when she got him, and in less than a year, he's dead. That's a very rapid decline. You can't tell me that no one saw anything wrong with that picture. I guess nobody at that stable understands that there is NEVER an excuse for a horse to be skinny. Maybe they thought it was normal because he was old. Bagh! I loath that excuse.

On the other hand, I have little to no sympathy for the girl. I get the impression that she's a few bricks short of a cartload. Who the hell films their deceased animal??? Isn't it bad enough that you have to see it once? Why on God's green earth would you want to relive it? And why would you think that anyone else would want to see it? That bit with the dead horse was more than a little mortifying. It's obvious that some thought went into those photos and videos, especially the walking away scene at the end. I wonder if she was already thinking about what song to put in the video? Did she pose for those photos of her cuddling with Pony's corpse? For God's sake, her pony just died. Making an over-dramatic video should be the last thing on her mind!

Call me crazy, but she didn't look like a little girl that had just lost her pony. Most people would be inconsolable if their horse had just dropped dead. She didn't look all that choked up over it.

Now, I do blame her for continuing to ride Pony when he was looking like a rack of bones. As much as she rode him bareback, did she not feel his ribs and spine sticking out? She appears to be in her early teens, and she's damn well old enough to tell the difference between fat and skinny. There are kids half her age who could look at her pony and know that something was wrong. She made the choice to keep riding the poor thing when she should have known a hell of a lot better than that. She needs to be taught that there's more to horse ownership than riding. It also bothers me that she never says anything that would imply that she acknowledged that her horse had lost a ton of weight. She seems to believe that it was a sudden and unexpected tragedy, when any normal person would have seen it coming a mile away.

This girl is obviously bright enough to make videos and put them on Youtube (and disable comments on certain videos. Wink wink). There's no reason she couldn't have gone on a horse forum and asked around as to why her horse was losing weight. And she definitely could have done some research.

I understand that she's now on her third horse. Don't tell me this kid isn't spoiled. And extremely dramatic.

Those dead pony scenes are burned into my mind. I never want to see that video again.

2 comments:

  1. I couldn't make it all the way through the video. I had to stop watching when I saw the hip bones sticking out of the poor pony who was still trying to do what was asked and please his owner. Very sad.

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  2. I feel the same way about those clips. When my pony died at the age of 40, from old age, i didn't step foot out of the house all day long, i couldn't keep myself together.

    You have to be plain out stupid to ride a horse that's that underweight. Forget age, it's common sense. Didn't they notice anything two months before in the videos where the horse was already abnormally skinny?!?

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