The fourth of July weekend has passed, in which we celebrated the freedoms of our country. Or did we? Regardless, there are many freedoms we enjoy as humans which aren't always extended to animals (or any creature/plant/organism). Yes, there are many wonderful people who care deeply for and extend an amazing level of consideration for their animals, but that in and of itself does not mean those animals are free.
When slavery was legal and the norm in the south, just because you treated your slaves well didn't extend any freedoms or rights. It just meant that they experienced a level of captivity which was better than many others' in captivity. Still, they were slaves, captives, subject to the whims of any white person around them. According to most accounts slaves were considered the same as livestock.
In that context let's look at our horses. They are subject to whatever whim we should have. We buy/sell/trade them as we wish (or the market will support). When they are no longer useful we can put them down, send them to auction or the slaughterhouse. If they misbehave there are torture devices to deal with that – from whips to spurs, harsh bits and even some trainers have been found to use electric cattle prods on their horses.
In competition horses are subjected to unnatural trimming, shoeing and soring all to change the way they move. Their mouths are strapped shut so they can't escape the yanking and pulling their rider does on the reins. Their heads are pulled down and into their chest to create submissiveness. Tails are cut, set, docked and blocked.
And if you're unlucky enough to be a Thoroughbred born into the race industry, you might face surgery before you're matured just to impress potential buyers when you're a yearling. Run to make your owners/trainer/industry money and then discarded to an auction where you'll be even more lucky if you don't get bought to go to slaughter.
Disposable, our horses are disposable. They exist only to serve some purpose to us. If they cannot be trained, ridden, competed, raced, bred or sold for profit then they have little value. Imagine if that is how you were treated – zero value if you couldn't be educated in a specific field (which you might not naturally excel in), work well with your boss (who might be an ego-maniac asshole), give public speeches well, run marathons and WIN, produce children every year on demand.
The problem isn't with horse slaughter, the problem is that our children are being taught humans are the dominant species, the smartest, the strongest, the BEST. And everything else is “less than” and subject to us. Until we address and change that major issue we'll forever see cases of abuse and neglect not just of the horse, but of all animals. We'll continue seeing men shooting their horse just to “prove a point” in the horse slaughter debate – and to clarify, that point was never quite clear but resulted in a horse being shot point blank in the head.
And more subtle signs will continue, completely ignored, like horses being locked away in stalls for all but a short time when they are ridden, because it's “convenient” for the rider. Then punished for succumbing to normal stress behaviors like weaving, stall kicking, cribbing, windsucking, pawing, pacing and calling out to their horse-mates.
Minimizing abuses
I do realize there is a price all horses pay by being in our care. They lose a certain freedom, and in return they can often gain easier access to food, water, shelter than if they were roaming in the wild. Is the trade-off worth it?
To me, it's only worth it if the horse still has a voice of their own. If I don't subject them knowingly to pain or risk them injury so I can profit. I look to see that my horses are engaged, interested, have life in their eyes. That they choose to interact with me, not because I'm making them uncomfortable to be away from me.
How do you feel about how horses are kept, treated, trained or discarded?
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Not horse-related…just a pet peeve.
All cultures, colors, and creeds had slaves. Not just “whites.”
Slaves came from all cultures, colors, and creeds.
As for American history….slaves weren’t just of African extraction. Many were native or white.
There were also freed blacks that owned black slaves and many of the native tribes had black, white, or native slaves.
It shows an ignorance of history to talk about all slaves as being of color and all slave owners as being white.
You are 100% correct, slavery was not explicitly white slavers/”black” slaves. Neither was the history of slavery in America the most recent, the most prevalent or most inhumane.
My use of American slavery between white slavers and “black” slaves was not out of ignorance, but rather simplification. The point of the article is not to dive into the history of slavery among humans, but rather to use a simplified example of a single “incidence” of slavery in history in order to connect the reader to the issue I am discussing in the article.
Why? Because unfortunately not everyone is aware of how widespread slavery was in a manner not only cross-culterally, cross-racially (and inter-racially as you point out “blacks” owning “blacks”, even in Europe it was not at all uncommon at various times in their history for white people to enslave other white people, carrying over to the first populations in America as they brought white slaves over from Europe), etc. The issue is simply too large to cover all of it in an article which is not actually discussing the global issue of slavery (which is still happening around the globe).
What is this picture from? Who would DO this? When I was a kid I used to unchain the palomino stud next door. A gentle old fellow who loved nothing more than to eat grass and be scratched behind the ears. The owner kept him on an iron chain, in the rain and all kinds of weather, tethered to a spike in the ground. The grass within the small circle where he lived had been eaten… so I would sneak over and play with him. There was no fence on the property. He wasn’t skinny or starving. I used to secretly clean his hooves and bring him goodies. It just broke my heart that I was just a kid and couldn’t really do anything. Then one day he was just… gone. I cried.
People continue to do all sorts of atrocious things to horses (and all animals). Animal abuses are still met with limited criminal charges/fines. But even if we look at crimes punishable by life in prison or even the death penalty we see people cross those lines too. It isn’t the punishment that is too weak, it’s how we are raised, imo.
Thumbs up, Little Crow. My family are from Greece. The Greeks had slaves. The Greeks were enslaved. We had blond hair and blue / green eyes before Persia invaded… ;0)