One with the Herd
A long-time feminist, the racehorse Zenyatta’s story grabbed my attention because her bodaceous, curvaceous self has held her own in a field dominated for centuries by finely bred and trained males. She is one joyously powerful female! I hope you saw her magnificent gallop-in-from-the-back of the pack loss-by-a-whisker in the last Kentucky Derby. Not usually a racing fan, I was on the edge of my chair! You can see her win the Breeder’s Cup in this cliphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoyYGjCTQGk
Of course I’m not alone in thinking horses are divine creations. They are lifted up in the Koran: “When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon they back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword.”
I can see the saddle as a place of a sacred communing. As my aunt, a long-time horse trainer, rider, and teacher put it: “Caring for horses and connecting with them as partners also connects us to the land and the larger world. It’s never just the person and the horse, it’s always the person, the horse and the environment that they are part of. They invite us into their world as accept us as part of their herd,with a (mostly) joyful, willing spirit.”
So I was greatly saddened when I read recently about horses being used to run drugs and then abandoned in the Southwest, and about horses being released into fields north of Dublin during this Great Recession. Because they are expensive to keep, horses have long been given up by those facing hard times. But to release them in the desert, or in a wintery no-man’s land is hard to understand.
Without decent food and water, these animals quickly weaken. From a March third copy of The Portlander, out of Oregon, we see some of the possible results of such abuse: “Additional tests show that all of the horses are in depressed states suffering from severe malnutrition. Veterinary exams also found that they horses suffered from hoof abscesses, rain rot, ear mites, skin sores, gingival abscesses and severe dehydration. They also displayed flaccid muscles that could barely hold their weight and swollen limbs from infection and lack of appropriate nutrition.”http://theportlander.com/2011/01/05/abused-horses-rescued-in-woodburn/
My source in Ireland tells me that – between the weather and the economy- this was a very harsh winter, and a horse can now be got for a cell phone. People buy them cheap in markets in Dublin, race them, and then abandon them again. (See www.ispca.ie. ) In a country that has long revered the beauty and intelligence of these animals, it’s shocking to see them abused.
These recent tragedies overlie too many cases of abandonment and abuse already happening around the world. If we sincerely cherish this web of life, we can all help by teaching children –early and often- compassion for all animals. We can help others understand what we take on when we take responsibility for our fellow creatures.
Bringing her love of horses wherever she goes, my aunt puts it this way: “Caring for the horses – in Hawaiian, that’s malama ka lio – means, of course, providing sufficient feed, water, shelter, sufficient space, companionship, a healthy environment. Ideally, it also means helping them learn to relax and trust us, their partners in the horse-human relationship.”
Building trust between species is a vital step in insuring our mutual survival on our jewel of a planet.
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Photo: Sarah Blanchard and friends on a trail ride in Hawaii.
Lots of places, luckily, do minister to abandoned and abused animals, including the Irish S.P.C.A. mentioned above. Here’s a small sampling:
http://support.mspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=acac_Nevins_AboutEquineandFarmACAC
http://www.freshstarthorserescue.org/category/blog/
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