Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Because this is right up my alley

A friend sent me a link to this blog: Fugly Horse of the Day.

(Already the blogger is getting "You So Mean" comments from that every so popular person, Anonymous. Idjut.) Some of her (his?) commentary about "over at the knee" or "back at the knee" may go over my average non-horsie reader's head, but some of her other posts are priceless.

My Favorite three posts (as a sample):

From Fugly Horses Jumping Badly, "When the horse has his eyes shut because he can't bear to watch, you know you are in trouble. That is all I am going to say."






From Whoever Bred This Horse: You Need A New Hobby, "Where do I even begin? It's easier to list the parts of him that are ok."





And, my favorite of all:

From a post on why spotted horses are not automatically wonderful beasts: "Wow. Get a load of that head. That is one heck of a honking roman nose/pig eye combo, even for this kind of horse.....

This girl appears to be a barrel race rider and the overall effect is that of a guy named Possum who has hotwired someone's Porsche, painted it camouflage and installed a horn that plays the theme from "The Dukes of Hazzard."

OK, so that last part was mean. I think the girl with the bright pink border doesn't realize the image she is projecting, she just loves her pony. And she should.

The point is though that someone made the decision to Create these odd looking things. Perhaps they shouldn't have? Perhaps not all horses, not all mustangs, not all PMU foals , not every backyard pony needs to procreate? Especially when we have outlawed slaughter houses.

(Note: If you want a PMU foal, a byproduct of the Premarin manufacturing industry, then go ahead. I think that's fine. But for the love of all that's holy, Don't Breed The Thing. Even if it has spots.)

(Second note: A PMU rescue is about $800 in adoption fees. At auction, selling at meat market prices a draft-cross yearling is about, what, about $300? I forget how much a yearlingish draft-cross weighs, but I think I remember hearing that meat prices were 50 to 60 cents per pound? Fuzzy on the details, but jeez, we've got horses clogging the system already before you throw on the PMUs And Their Own Offspring. "Rescue." Yeah.)

Funny how the snark crosses boundaries of interest. This one's got a more technical component, I guess, but it's not as if this commentary hasn't been floating around the horse industry for generations.

In other news, I'm heading to NYC for a week with my son. Neo's in Boston having a great time, so that leaves Dear Butcher home with the youngest to take care of camp, the business, the pets, the house, and, eh, everything else. Wish him luck.

7/3/07 Edited to add:

Why did Blogger scramble this post while autosaving? A sentence over here...a clause over there...thanks. That was fun.

5 comments:

Bev (BB) said...

This is not a comment on their ugliness. Exactly. ;p But that middle one immediately made me think potbellied pig for some strange reason. Must be the ratio of body to legs. Either that or the coloring.

Rolling eyes. ;)

Mailyn said...

Awww, poor horsies. So, not all horsies are pretty but meh, I've seen uglier people. What can you do? I still think they are all adorable. But I understand. Some people think all children are beautiful but I've seen some really ugly ones. Then again, I don't like kids so I coul eb alittle biased. LOL.

HAPPY 4th!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kate said...

so what'll happen when the last horsey slaughterhouse closes? Where will all the horses go?

Kate said...

I read this thread and thought about you.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/4/75713/06271

And this other thread is helping me figure out what to do for my boy. (I've posted there.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/8/65926/57366

Anonymous said...

In the post on "missing body parts," I encountered the assumption that all of these eff-ups are due to bad breeding. Is that really true, though? Can a breeder control appearance to that fine a degree? Aren't there unexpected outcomes, at least occasionally?