I am reading a neato book Animals Make Us fully Human. The author attacks a lot of things 'we all know," and so the book is very informative. But at one point she claims that 40% or so of horses (presumably in the modern USA are disposed of as untrainable.
First, could this be true?
Next, could this have true in (say) 1909 or 1809? Have we lost our ability to train horses, or have a large minority of them always been untrainable?
… Where on earth does she claim that this 40% of horses goes?
A naturally rogue (untrainable) horse is actually extremely rare. Extremely. Most horses with bad behavior are made that way through human ignorance, not born that way. And even in the badly behaved horse, there are generally be areas where the training sticks just fine. A horse may buck violently undersaddle, but still be obediant to the handler leading him, or vice versa.
Horses are herd-living and thus inclined towards interaction. Their herd style is hierarchical, and they understand the need to obey a superior.
Ask an experienced horseperson and they will say it is closer to 1% who are fundamentally untrainable.
Edited to add, according to an anti-slaughter source, 90,000 horses were slaughtered for meat in 2005, roughly 0.7% of the U.S. horse population. (numbers from the USDA and American Horse Council) I would have guessed that a large proporotion would be Thoroughbred ex-racehorses, but they claim that 70% are American Quarter Horses.
My daughter has been riding at a reasonably high level for about 14 years, was the captain of her university team. I was the lucky(?) owner of two horses (in series) for about 8 years. I’ve never heard of untrainable horses, though I’m sure there are a few. None of the foals at our barns were ever untrainable. There are some horses too advanced for their riders, but that is different. I’d guess that 1% is a lot closer to the truth than 40%.
I wonder if this number is going to change. In Northern California (and probably elsewhere) there is a big problem with people not being able to afford feeding their horses anymore. There was a wild horse adoption meeting a few weeks ago which didn’t go well at all. There are a lot of people trying to give away their horses.
We donated our horse to charity 4 years ago, but we probably couldn’t do it today.
We don’t have an innate ability to train horses, so we didn’t lose it. The ability is held among those who have worked with many horses for a long time. Many “untrainable” horses are bought at auction, and trained, by skilled trainers.
Most of us have no idea how to ride, much less train, horses. We have cars now. It’s no surprise that our horse skills have faded away. For the same reason, only the oldest math-heads know how to work a slide rule.
I have spent a lifetime in and around the livestock industry. I’ve usually owned horses and currently I own and ride three. IMHO, the 40% untrainable figure is ridiculous. 1%, maybe, though I’ve never seen a truly untrainable horse.
There are some horses, like some dogs, that have been made unmanageable through poor human handeling, but that’s another story entirely.
If I recall from my recent reading of the book she is NOT claiming they are untrainable - she is claiming that the owners regard them as untrainable, largely due to their own ignorance in how to properly train the horses.
Horses prior to the modern era were probably considered even more disposable than they are today. While some were treated quite well all too many were brutalized, neglected, or worked to death. Horses were regarded much like cars are today - there are elite models worth incredible amounts of money and lavished with care, but many more “junkers” and wrecks used up and discarded.
Slaughter.
Thoroughbreds get quite a lot of press, but they are vastly outnumbered by quarter horses in North America. So I would have expected the majority to be quarter horses.
Also, ex-racing thoroughbreds, assuming they aren’t crippled, retain some value both as riding horses (when I took lessons at a stable as a young woman one of the horses I rode was an ex-racer) and for breeding purposes (for polo ponies or to quarter horses) even if they weren’t big winners. Quarter horses are intrinsically less valuable and common as dirt. Unfortunately, they are all too often treated like dirt either through ignorance or malice.
Horses eat enormous amounts of food - the stable I used to take lessons at had acquired a number of horses from the Humane Society, which had wound up there after ignorant people bought them and failed to feed them sufficiently.
Personally, I think in some cases it would be kinder to slaughter unwanted horses in a humane manner than to allow them to be subjected to neglect and/or abuse. I really do love horses, but unlike most Americans, I don’t get the creeping willies over the notion of people eating their meat. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen directly some of the results of neglect and abuse (both from ignorance and malice) so putting an animal down isn’t the worst of all possible fates, and I don’t object to “recycling” the results any more than I object to eating cattle. That said, I wouldn’t want to eat I horse I had known personally, but then, I don’t eat my pets.
But less than 1% are put to slaughter. So where do the other 39% go?
Just to be clear. I am also NOT anti-slaughter, in fact I am cautiously pro-slaughter, for the same reasons you outlined. I chose an anti-slaughter source on the assumption that their estimates would err more on the high side than the low side of how many animals are actually affected.
If I had to parse the paraphrased text in a way that might actually bear some relation to reality, it would read "40% of horses sent to slaughter, are slaughtered due to behavioral problems. " (as opposed to being old, sick, or just costing too much for the owner).
THAT, I could believe.
My guess would be : to the knacker’s, to be reincarnated as glue.
@ everyone who’s responded to my post with some variation of “to slaughter”:
I was looking more for *documentation *of where she thinks they go. It would be pretty hard for 40% of all horses to be slaughtered without there being some kind of evidence, was my point.
That figure is probably low. A small number (3?) of US slaughterhouses deal exclusively in horsemeat, and mostly for export. In Indiana and, I suspect, many other states, the sale of horsemeat for human consumption is illegal. However, a horse may be taken to a local butcher for processing if the meat goes back to the customer who brought it in. That’s not sale. Many lame horses become food for humans, right here in the US. I personally don’t see the harm in that. A lame horse will be put down. It might as well feed somebody.
Perhaps to other owners who were able to train them.
Do you actually have any stats to back that up? It seems kind of a jump to go from “a horse may be butchered on behalf of a customer” to “lots of people eat their own lame horses,” given that there’s not a big tradition of horse as a people-food animal in the U.S. I’d think it would be just as likely for people to be squicked out by the idea.
“Disposed of” has rather an air of finality to it, to my ear.
Are you saying that it is a common practice in the United States for an individual to eat the meat of a horse that they personally owned?
That it is a common practice in the U.S. to eat horse meat from any source?
In many cases, yes. In this discussion, however, we are not certain those are the exact words of the author being referred to, and it seems that those horses are not being killed. Thus I speculate that the meaning is “gotten rid of” in one way or another, not necessarily sent to their final doom.
I haven’t read the book, but I agree that 40% seems incredibly high even when you take into account ignorant owners. Did she perhaps mean that 40% aren’t trainable (or capable) of doing the owners’ chosen activities? For example, no amount of training would make my thorougbred jumper be a good cow horse. So maybe 40% of horses have their owners give up on them? Or does she maybe add in the number that become unrideable due to lameness or injury?
I’m struggling to come up with anything close to 40% otherwise!
My daughter’s riding instructor rather specializes in “green” horses who were disappointing to their owners in one way or another, mostly because the owners didn’t have the skill or patience to train them. They aren’t thoroughbreds for the most part, but they had to be re-trained to behave themselves around humans and other horses. Most of them still have some quirks, but, who doesn’t?
She does mention a portion of them not being slaughtered in the US, but rather sold to brokers who take them to other countries where some probably are slaughtered and Og knows what happens to the rest. Some die in transit - we had one such group of horses being transported in a trailer than overturned on a freeway near here last year and a lot of them either died in the accident or had to be put down on site due to injuries. “Disposed of” in the sense the owners got rid of them.
Nope, that’s not what she meant - pretty clear she’s not talking about training unsuitable for a type of horse, or injury, or lameness. Basically, horses gotten rid of because the owners don’t know how to handle them properly. Or yes, the owners give up on them.