The day started out cold and wasn't going to get much better. I froze all day long. I had to run out and help unload a large bale of alfalfa at the other side of Ruidoso Downs. Then I started fretting when Chance spotted a stakes mare with blood pouring out of her nose.
Follow @DeniseBundyI started with a migraine last night, which grew increasingly worse through the day, so by 2 pm I was thoroughly stressed and frustrated ~ and very ill. As the temperature dropped into the 30's I couldn't get warm no matter how much I tried.
Being in the cold literally eats away at you. You can only shiver for so long before exhaustion takes over and you can no longer shiver. It's simply draining physically and emotionally. I ended up going to bed before 2 pm deathly ill. I don't want to face tonight. I am simply mortified.This has been a really bad day all around.
Obama signed the horse slaughter bill which means the suffering and death of not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of horses.
Obama Lifts Ban On Horse Slaughter
December 1, 2011(HORSE SLAUGHTER) An ethical conundrum: Despite the fact that 70 percent of Americans oppose horse slaughter, a five-year ban on U.S. slaughterhouses has been lifted. As the country’s number of neglected and abandoned horses continues to rise, there is a disturbing prevalence of U.S. horses being sold to border countries and processed for meat. Read on to learn more about this unsettling reinstatement. — Global Animal
What to do about growing numbers of neglected and abandoned horses in the US is an ethical conundrum that Congress and President Obama quietly addressed this month via a spending bill: bring back the slaughterhouses.A Department of Agriculture bill, signed into law Nov. 18, reinstates federal funding for USDA inspection of horse meat intended for human consumption, which Congress had withheld since 2006. That de facto ban on horse slaughter has now come to an end, to the outrage of the animal rights community, amid reports that US horse owners were simply shipping their animals to Mexico and Canada for slaughter and processing.
According to a pro-slaughter group called United Horsemen, meat processors are now considering opening facilities in at least a half-dozen states, including Georgia, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, and possibly Idaho.
The issue has galvanized the animal rights community, which contends that horses are too intelligent to be food animals, and that legal processing of horse meat will endanger wild horse populations and motivate Americans to raise horses specifically for human consumption.The other view, accepted by Congress after a study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), is that more abandoned and neglected horses in the US – which has 9 million equines – are being sold and processed for meat anyway in countries that may not have the same standard of humane euthanasia that US law requires. Government statistics show that 138,000 American horses were sold and processed for meat in other countries in 2010 – a 660 percent increase from 2007, according to the GAO report.”We can’t monitor horse slaughter in a plant in Mexico or Canada … [a]nd so we don’t know if it’s being done humanely or not because the USDA obviously doesn’t have any jurisdiction there,” Rep. Jack Kingston (R) of Georgia, who was instrumental in the reinstatement, told the Oklahoman newspaper’s Sonya Colberg and Chris Casteel. “Along the way, these horses are having a rough transit. USDA does not have the jurisdiction over how the animals are treated along the way.”The poor economy has been tough on horse owners and the animals themselves, leading to what Representative Kingston calls an “unanticipated problem with horse neglect and abandonment.”
In Colorado alone,horse abandonment ”increased 60 percent from 975 in 2005 to 1,588 in 2009,” the GAO report stated.What’s more, The New York Times reports that the law forced many breeders and owners to go out of business because their inability to sell horses for meat “removed the floor” for prices while forcing owners to shoulder costs for euthanizing and disposing of unwanted horses.
Before the ban, the horse slaughter business generated some $65 million in revenues a year.“When they closed the plants, that put more of a hardship on our horses than the people who wanted to stop the slaughter can imagine,” said John Schoneberg, a Nebraska horse breeder, according to the Times report.Nevertheless, animal rights activists are furious over the decision to bring back horse processing plants in the US. They say that ending the de facto ban will challenge the ethics of horse ownership and undermine the sanctity of the unique bond between humans and horses.“They’re signing the death sentence for thousands of our American horses. The wild mustangs in Oklahoma and every horse in Oklahoma is at risk,” Oklahoma City horse advocate Stephanie Graham told the Oklahoman. “Horses are going to die and it’s going to be brutal.”
More Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1129/
Unfortunately the realities are nothing like most people think, as the photo below shows.
How can we expect human beings to treat animals with compassion if we can't even treat human beings with compassion.
I don't believe I have EVER witnessed any none violent crime that can be as devastating as stealing someone's home. I am walking in Dorothy McKeevers footsteps, day by day, month by month, year by year.
Liam Griffin, I sat in your law office with two witnesses as you gave me your promise, your guarantee, that our money would be returned before harm came to us.
Patricia Ogilvie-Huckins you were present the day I signed contract with your son. You walked out of the kitchen with Sylve Huckins and your son introduced me to you. He told you that I was the British horse trainer he had told you about, the one he was going to build the home and barn for. Why didn't you say something? There may be a rational and reasonable explanation but I have spent over 3 years, homeless, not understanding it. I understand it even less knowing that though I was a total stranger, both Dorothy McKeever and Sally Canning you KNEW, and you knew what your son had done to them and others.
Dr. Kenneth Ogilvie, I contacted you and simply asked for a reference, not knowing that Robert Huckins was your cousin. Robert Huckins had just stolen over $30,000 from the domestic violence shelter, HEAL, yet everyone was trying to hide it. There was a history of stealing large amounts of money. $65,000 PLUS from Nancy Canning. $89,000 PLUS from Dorothy McKeever, $45,000 from Francis McKinney. The list just goes on and on and on.
Because of Robert Huckins I ended up paying $140,000 to be homeless.. sat in the cold, emotionally, physically and financially broke. In the middle of a recession, with no way to recover the stolen funds.
Today Robert Huckins has his own home...
He also has OUR home.....
He also has a lot of people's money...
And his freedom.
Women are not banks or loan institutions. Women should not be the source of a retirement fund for people who don't want to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Holding women hostage while playing with the judicial system, a horrendous game of cat and mouse extending YEARS, with the victims whose very homes, families and stability are in jeopardy is cruelty, as cruel as a physical beating. It is financial and emotional RAPE. Homelessness is not justice. It is a slow, painful death.
Please, I beg with everything I have within me, please convince Robert Huckins to stop this torture and return the building fund he stole from us so we too, can have a home.
Relevant pages:
http://roberthuckinsvictim.
http://roberthuckinsvictim.
Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.~ George Bernard Shaw
