Our Pony

[SyberB]

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40!! Wow!

I gave away a very old pony that deserved a better home. Bambi was a great old lady but when I had to retire her due to age and because she deserved it, the other ponies picked on her mercilessly. She was unhappy and it showed. I found a lovely place in Maryland that had an older couple who just wanted something tiny to look at and live it's life out on their small farm. Bambi lived until the ripe old age of 40 with them.

[Twilla]

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There are a lot of people giving away horses these days. That's how we got Hunter (and I never expected a 'give away' pony to be that nice). It can get very expensive to feed and care for horses, especially in the winter or when they have vet bills.

Heck, I wasn't aware of it, but nowadays, you have to have a Coggins certificate for your horse to haul him around. It's not very expensive, but when you combine the $25 test fee with the $50 vet fee, it's getting up there... and you have to do that once a year, in addition to shots. And fortunately, the guy who is keeping Hunter now trims hooves, because farriers used to be about $50 when I had my last horses done... but now a farrier visit runs around $100, and that has to be done every few months. PLUS the cost of feed.

Horses are not a poor man's hobby (but we're doing the best we can).

Someone at another forum has a relative trying to give away their two horses. He said he's tired of taking care of them. Who thinks like that?

That's my point, unless something out of the ordinary comes up to stress your finances, you should plan on having that animal for its entire life and treat it the way it deserves. I hate hearing about people that 'get tired of taking care of it'... if you think like that, you don't deserve to have an animal in your life.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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On that point, you're absolutely right and I agree with you. But there are people who hit hard times or other circumstances, like the race world, where they feel giving the animal away is better than not being able to take care of it. I look at it this way with the people you're talking about on that forum, at least they knew they were not going to do right by the animal and found homes for them than just ignore them and let them starve. I've seen that too many times as well I'm sure Syber has.

[twisteroo]

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I know some whitetrash from that place that has horses, sometimes when I hear the complaints about how much it costs I offer to stop buy with a shotgun and solve their problems.

I know, I know, I could never actually do it, unless I was really hungry. But I just like to say it for shock value.