The guy who coined the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions," was not too far off. It turns out the person who wrote this post just moved here from the city, and knows nothing about horses. He admitted as much in the comments section a little further down the page, once people started questioning whether or not he should be urging people to stop and handle/feed someone else's animal, who clearly was not hungry or neglected in any way whatsoever.
For the record, I'm a big fan of kindness, especially towards animals. But ascribing human emotions to animals is not generally a good thing, unless you are an expert in that particular animal or species, enough to know how they emote their moods.
I drive past this horse myself several times a week and can tell you that this big gelding is not sad, but rather....zen. He's chilling in his favorite corner, lazing in the sun, and meditating on nothing in particular. Or who knows, perhaps he's planning final details regarding the destruction of western civilization/mankind in a very slow and methodical way. We won't know until it's too late.
He's well fed, in great condition, and just doing what horses do in the heat of summer, which is stand in one place for several hours, pondering, studying...zoning out. All horses do this. But I'm guessing he's not sad.
What really gets me is the guy floating the idea that everyone start feeding the "sad and lonely horse" carrots. Can you imagine the amount of carrots this horse would be ingesting if 75 people stopped to feed him every day? It kind of boggles the mind and could actually be damaging to the horse, since carrots are pretty high in sugar and are supposed to be a treat, not a staple.
Some people move here to our area for the option to keep livestock, and others move here for the wine. And as long as the livestock people don't start trying to tell the wine people what makes a good Cabernet and the wine people don't start trying to cheer up the livestock people's animals who are pastured near common roads, life can be good here. It's all about mutual respect.
What we all need to focus on is the passive aggressive and insecure goats on the next street over, anyway. Now they need some serious help, I'm telling you. Perhaps we can find them a good therapist.
Our little corner of the country is quickly becoming a place where city people move to the country, to big, plastic houses with yards that used to be a corn field. Changes the dynamic of an area ... and not in a good way. My sincerest wish is that these new neighbors appreciate the wonderful community that they are joining, and that they do what they can to become part of it.
ReplyDeleteI must be really out of the loop, because I had no idea that there were neighborhood message boards. Not surprised ... in fact, it's a good idea to get info out to residents.
We have the same issue here, Connie. And like your area, they seem to want everything to change to their way once they get here! The message board is called NextDoor, and they have neighborhoods from all over the country on it. It is a good way to get important info out, but there's also a lot of advertising and whining that goes on lol!
DeleteI used to have people stop to look at our donkeys. One day I spotted someone feeding them and took the opportunity to school them. They truly hadn't considered that it's just not okay to feed other people's animals. Boggles the mind. I've been here 15 years and I'm not impressed with the changes.
ReplyDeleteI'n not impressed either, Denise. It seems like just since we've been here the vibe has just completely changed, and very rapidly. Feeding other people's animals is just the tip of the iceberg!
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