I was just listening to 710 KIRO AM here in the Seattle area, and they had on the man that owned the horse used as the model for Spirit. He has sold the horse to Dreamworks to be used for this rerason.
Well, he was notified by some people who saw the horse, and they claimed that it was being abused by the trainer the Dreamworks had assigned to it. When he complained, they took the horse to the vet, and had him fixed up, THEN (a couple of months later) released a vet’s bill saying that nothing was wrong with the horse (mind you, the former owner has photographic evidence to the contrary). Now Dreamworks is trying to hit him with a settlement/gag order about the issue.
Interestingly enough, the man ISN’T calling for a boycott. He’s asking people to see the movie, then ask why Dreamworks isn’t as interested in the well-being of the REAL horse as the cartoon one.
I’m trying to find some online cites for this, haven’t had any luck yet
here’s a link from when the horse was originally sold:
The man in the article (Rick Littleton) was the man being interviewed on the station today.
So, what we have here is the alleged former owner of a horse who says the horse was abused (although the vet’s report says it wasn’t) who wants people to see the movie so that the people who see the movie can make a comparison with the animated horse and the real horse.
I think I’ll wait for some corroborating evidence before I get outraged.
Well, not exactly what I said - the guy said that the time between when he told Dreamworks about the abuse and when they had a vet DO the report was a couple of months - so what he said (paraphrase here) is that they ‘did the right thing in getting the horse treatment, but want to deny that it ever NEEDED trteatment.’
And it’s not about ‘comparing the animated horse to the real horse’. He’s saying that the studio is guilty of treating the horse badly while making a movie about treating horses kindly and with respect. Kind of a ‘do as we say, not as we do’ type of thing.
Without any evidence, what are we supposed to do with this allegation? Until something surfaces, why should we believe anything bad about Dreamworks?
And here I thought this thread was going to mention that since Spirit’s mother was part of his herd, he was in all likelyhood screwing his mom. :eek: Or that Rain was going to be only one of his many mares…
I thought maybe someone had spotted a flash-frame of a horse shagging a munchkin in the background.