N80
Super Member
I just need to blow off some steam....so horse lovers please forgive me, but I just hate horses so much right now I can hardly stand it.
First, I get a call from my 30-something sister and she got thrown from her 'new' old horse earlier this week. Broke a rib and four vertebrae in her back. She'll do just fine but she's in for a lot of pain for the next few weeks.
Today my wife tells me that my daughter's "good" horse got kicked by another horse and its front leg is BROKEN! That's bad news of course but its really just a cherry on top of the history of this horse. First, my wife gets a job to replace my daughter's first 'cheap' horse that just was not a good show/jumper. This new horse is a 'real' jumper and after months of searching it was just the right one and at $10,000 it was selling at third its real value. OMG can you believe that! Have these two women never heard of the term "horse trading" for goodness sake?....well, as they say, there's one born every minute. In any case, this horse, which is truly a beautiful animal doesn't pan out as a jumper either. In my opinion, not entirely its fault, coach is too timid, too cautious etc etc blah blah blah. So, they take up dressage.... no offense intended but BORING! Anyway, that's working out okay even though lessons are expensive and room and board for this beast cost more than my first apartment.
So now, maybe two or three years after buying it, it has a broken front leg. Could go to a regional vet school for repairs but that would cost more than the horse was worth and still might not work. So the local horse vet is going to keep it in a stall and see what happens. It does not look good. And even this isn't going to be cheap. My wife never got any insurance on this $10,000 "investment" (I am never involved with these decisions). So first, they take this $10,000 jumper and ruin it in regard to jumping which cuts its value in half and now it is probably going to be glue. A total $10,000 loss! And in the current economy there will be no $10,000 replacement horse, or any replacement horse for that matter.
I don't think my daughter (she's 15) understands all this. I don't think she has come to grips that we're going to have to put this horse down, much less that there will not be another one. (She has a trail horse...the first one we bought for jumping) down near our property but it will never do jumping or dressage). And even if we don't end up having to put it down, it is unlikely that it will ever perform as a show horse again.
Horses are huge, expensive, belligerent and dangerous and despite that, they are also incredibly stupid, needful, fragile and high maintenance. I'll admit it. I just don't 'get' horses.
And I appreciate you guys listening this far. As you can imagine, with a heartbroken 15 year old girl and a bewildered wife here at home, I can't have this rant at home right now. I've got to be understanding and....quiet for a while.
But at some point she's just going to have to accept that when you deal with these big beautiful animals this is just all part of what real life with horses is like and if she plans on horses being a part of her life, she'll have to deal with it. Just like my sister will have to deal with her broken back, just like my niece had to deal with a ruptured spleen (kicked) and her dad (my B-I-L) has had to deal with a compound clavicle fracture and then years later, a severe concussion.
First, I get a call from my 30-something sister and she got thrown from her 'new' old horse earlier this week. Broke a rib and four vertebrae in her back. She'll do just fine but she's in for a lot of pain for the next few weeks.
Today my wife tells me that my daughter's "good" horse got kicked by another horse and its front leg is BROKEN! That's bad news of course but its really just a cherry on top of the history of this horse. First, my wife gets a job to replace my daughter's first 'cheap' horse that just was not a good show/jumper. This new horse is a 'real' jumper and after months of searching it was just the right one and at $10,000 it was selling at third its real value. OMG can you believe that! Have these two women never heard of the term "horse trading" for goodness sake?....well, as they say, there's one born every minute. In any case, this horse, which is truly a beautiful animal doesn't pan out as a jumper either. In my opinion, not entirely its fault, coach is too timid, too cautious etc etc blah blah blah. So, they take up dressage.... no offense intended but BORING! Anyway, that's working out okay even though lessons are expensive and room and board for this beast cost more than my first apartment.
So now, maybe two or three years after buying it, it has a broken front leg. Could go to a regional vet school for repairs but that would cost more than the horse was worth and still might not work. So the local horse vet is going to keep it in a stall and see what happens. It does not look good. And even this isn't going to be cheap. My wife never got any insurance on this $10,000 "investment" (I am never involved with these decisions). So first, they take this $10,000 jumper and ruin it in regard to jumping which cuts its value in half and now it is probably going to be glue. A total $10,000 loss! And in the current economy there will be no $10,000 replacement horse, or any replacement horse for that matter.
I don't think my daughter (she's 15) understands all this. I don't think she has come to grips that we're going to have to put this horse down, much less that there will not be another one. (She has a trail horse...the first one we bought for jumping) down near our property but it will never do jumping or dressage). And even if we don't end up having to put it down, it is unlikely that it will ever perform as a show horse again.
Horses are huge, expensive, belligerent and dangerous and despite that, they are also incredibly stupid, needful, fragile and high maintenance. I'll admit it. I just don't 'get' horses.
And I appreciate you guys listening this far. As you can imagine, with a heartbroken 15 year old girl and a bewildered wife here at home, I can't have this rant at home right now. I've got to be understanding and....quiet for a while.
But at some point she's just going to have to accept that when you deal with these big beautiful animals this is just all part of what real life with horses is like and if she plans on horses being a part of her life, she'll have to deal with it. Just like my sister will have to deal with her broken back, just like my niece had to deal with a ruptured spleen (kicked) and her dad (my B-I-L) has had to deal with a compound clavicle fracture and then years later, a severe concussion.