Ear to the ground horses

magentas

just watching this now, some very graphic images of dead horses:(:mad:

they are addressing the issue of responsible horse ownership and the effects of the recession on their welfare, ie. abandoned/neglected

I know feck all about horses TBH, my only awareness would be threads here and posters like AJ Discodog and EGAR discussing it. the poor animals are just been completely abandoned or traded for mobile phones:eek:

ppink

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0126/1224288326693.html

Cole

I watched that and read the link from ppink. It's good to see a 'joined up' approach being adopted to try and address the problem.

The thing that always comes to mind is.......with such a big horse 'industry' in Ireland and a lot of affluent people, either directly or indirectly involved, there should never really be a problem with at least having strong financial support for horse welfare activities. There may be individuals doing their bit to support local rescues but I'm unaware of any broad effort from within the industry to try and combat the problems, such as what Horse Sport Ireland are doing in Fingal.

ppink

If you look at the IHWT website they are sponsored by different horse racing organisations like HRI, Tattersals, Weatherby's etc. To what extent of course we do not know, and they have a relationship with trainers too...what with Moscow Flyer being their mascot so to speak.

tiger2

Horses in housing estates should be rounded up and moved out if they are being neglected. If the owners want them back let them pay for the vets fees, animal welfare officers time and effort and a large fine. Scumbags who abuse and neglect animals should be banned from ever owning them again.

Wisco

It's easy to say that these scumbags should be banned from owning horses (and I agree that they should) but due to the lack of traceability it's really not practical. If every horse in Ireland was chipped and had a passport, no problem. But that's not likely to happen in the near future. Given the horrific state of so many of these animals, I'd tend to reluctantly favor a nationwide cull of these unfortunates.
While I'd love to be able to say that these animals, especially the ones who aren't too bad off yet, could be rehomed or fed, I really just don't think that's a practical solution.
I did like to see the bit about educating young people as I would hope it would make them more aware of what some of their peers may be doing that results in neglect. But what they showed on Ear to the Ground doesn't even touch on the scale of the problem nationwide and I think we've gone past the stage when education of owners and rehabilitation of sick horses can fix things.
A cull may seem harsh, but it beats starving to death and rotting in a field or some mountaintop forest.

sh1tstirrer

Your man that said he was pulling a horse out of the ditch in the cold weather while his own horse was stabled where every horse should be. He wasn't fully correct in that statement if a horse is well fed they can live out during the winter even in cold weather.