Thanks to Fugly Blog for posting this story - and linking to this one.
The woman, according to these two stories is a HORSE DEALER trolling on Craigslist and other spots telling folks in desperate need to place their horses that she will give their horses a good home. I am posting tonights blog to highlight this single story (but it happens EVERY DAY) as a segway to these important points when giving a horse away...
1) If you are a horse owner and can no longer care for your horse - google horse rescue in your state; make calls and see if there is REPUTABLE rescue - ask for refs, ask for vet refs, do NOT trust anyone simply because they are a rescue - there are some rescues that are really dealers parading around with 501 status who won't give one iota about your horse or where he or she ends up. Any good rescue will promptly offer up oodles of refs...if you hear or sense hesitation - RUN FAR FAR FAR AWAY and find another rescue!
2) Post your horse on a reputable site like equine.com or dreamhorse.com or thehorse.com's free listing service and enlist the help of a rescue - (there are lots of good rescues who will help you - find a good rescue by visiting Global Federation of Animal Sancturies or Fugly Blog) - place your horse. For example, Angel Acres offers remote placement assistance and will screen prospective adopters for you and insist that all prospective adopters follow our $1 Horses Program.
3)If you do give your horse away require that they pay for a professional hauler - we NEVER allow our $1 horses to be picked up by an adopter (for the EXACT reason as what happened in the story above), just in case someone should slip thru our reference & background checks that would really want to flip our horse. Or you can have the adopter make a donation to a rescue or charity of your choice - PRIOR to the horse leaving.
You might be thinking, none of that will happen because people won't do it. I am here to tell you that ANY good horse person who cares about the horse they are adopting WILL make a donation to a rescue or will have the horse professionally hauled...and what if, in the unlikely event your are left with no one to take the horse and you are out of time...
IF your ONLY option (at least you think it's the only one) is to take your horse to auction...we HIGHLY recommend humane euthanasia.
Repeat- do NOT give your horse away to anyone that you cannot verify...I cannot tell you how many horses we have pulled from the kill pen that were "given to a friend" or "free leased to my cousin" or "donated to a school"...and do not think that sending a horse to auction is an ok thing...
Auctions are (we are referring to low end livestock auctions) NOT the place to send your faithful companion...a horse deserves to have a humane ending with the people that love him or her...not face a brutal death at the hands of a sadistic killer in an equine slaughter house. LARGE numbers of horses go from auction to slaughter each DAY...don't let your horse be one of them.
Making the decision to humanely euthanize a sound, healthy horse is truly one of the saddest things a horse owner may ever have to do and should only be done if all other options have been exhausted.
This kindest act of compassion (when no other option except auction or slaughter exists) will ensure he or she never winds up being brutally slaughtered to feed some foreign diner in Europe.
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