A Sad Story
Written by Hiddenhorse on 26/12/2009 – 7:40 pm -Here’s a sad story, overheard in a feed store.
“This woman got a horse and so she decided to give it a work out . What it needs, she thought, is a good old lungeing session over jumps etc. (make the bu***r work). But she worked it so hard it aborted the foal it was carrying, but it was OK because she didn’t even know it was pregnant!”
What do you think about that, do you think the lady was doing a good or a bad thing?
To my mind, the unfortunate fact that the mare was pregnant was beside the point, the the real problem is that any owner who would be prepared to work an unknown animal to such an extent that, had the horse been pregnant, it would have aborted the foal, sounds to me like someone who simply abuses horses. I’m sure that had the owner been challenged about the incident they would have defended their actions by claiming that the horse had been purchased to fulfil a purpose such as equestrian competition and it had to be made physically fit for this reason. In other words, they would use the idea of the horse’s utility to justify their actions (abuse).
This happens all the time in the horse world. However, try this, change the context a small amount, imagine the same actions occurred with same results only this time the utility model in question was that of the circus and this was a circus horse being trained for the entertainment of humans, doesn’t that put put things in perspective? Is this now animal abuse?
Try another shift of perspective imagine you are back in the 17th Century, you are a callous slave owner and you’ve just brought a new female slave… I’m sure you can fill in the rest of the story. Is this abuse now? I think most people would say it was, if only because we are now talking about the actions of one human being on another. But the actions, the thinking behind the actions and the beliefs of the abuser remain the same, only the context, – in each case a ‘utility model’, changes.
As I said, these things happen all the time. As far as I know the lady was never made to face the consequences of her actions, indeed it is very likely that she is unaware she has even done anything wrong and that is the real sting in the tale; it is not actually the people who commit these acts that are the problem, (I expect she would tell you she ‘loved’ her horses). The real villain here is the system, a system that justifies abuse under the disguise of a function or purpose.
But abuse is still abuse.
