Show Horses.

I like pretty pictures of horses. I love horse photos. But I don't believe in breeding horses just to get more horses that look good in photos.

And what is a halter class? It is where a horse is led into the ring, and judged like a dog in a dog show, maybe even less judging, at least the show dogs trot.

After explaining how I felt, I asked one person why the show had halter classes? She said it was because it was so much easier (than riding the horse in the ring, where the horse's gait and handling can be judged).

The point of having a horse instead of a dog, is that the horse is a riding animal. If you quit judging how a horse rides and handles, you will get horses with rough gaits, that are hard to control.

She said that lots of the older horse show people don't ride. Many of the people who have lots of horses don't even break the horse (teach it to let people ride it). She said that training a horse to be ridden was too much work, too much to expect from horse show people.

I felt that breeding horses to win in a halter class was not a good idea.

After that, changes in IRS laws, made using horses as a tax shelter harder. And required broodmares be broodmares, not riding animals. I'm guessing that plenty of people got out of raising horses when they could no longer use it as a tax shelter. But what effect did that have on halter classes?

To me, there is only one way to judge a saddle horse, get off the horse, and let the judge ride the horse for awhile.

To me, there is only one way to judge a trail horse, have the judge ride a different horse each day. Because some horses have a gait so bad that after a couple of hours ,you hurt, just from sitting on them while they walk the trail.

But other horses, with the same saddle, can be ridden all day, and after you get off, you feel fine.

Some horse are in between,, riding them on a trail is exhausting, but not painful. There are horses with gaits so bad that I would rather walk than ride them.

You can't tell which is which by looking at them. You have to ride them. An expensive purebred show horse may have a walk that gets to you. A cheap horse, that was sold for a slight bit more than their price per pound at the slaughter house, can have a soft gait that makes you feel good.

The other factor is calmness. Maybe a little factor of willing to obey easily, and being an easy keeper. Certainly, not fighting with other horses is a factor. But these are not the things that can be seen in a ring, are they?

So what do shows judge? We aren't doing that "purebred" thing are we?

As far as I am concerned only a judge who has ridden the horses himself, is fit to pass judgement on them. I have no idea how you could put that into a show, but that is my opinion.

BLM horses & burros

Yes, I know that today, horses are NOT being shot on BLM land - who I was addressing are the people who think we should return to shooting wild horses and burros.

Although such people might say "Shoot horses so that the plants can grow better, or so that deer will have more food; the reality is, that if the horses are on land that is leased to cattle ranchers, then the more horses that are gone, only means that more cattle can be run there.

BLM horses? photo

Wild Horses 2

There was an issue sometime back on one of the list that I sometimes read, about horse meat. You might remember that the US used to have slaughter houses that turned horses into meat for both people and animals to eat.

Some people saw nothing wrong with that, other people were upset, but what got my attention was which people were upset by it. Not who I would expect, so I read up on it a little.

There are issues other than the obvious, involved in the horse meat argument:

1. Many slaughtered horses are race horses whose have been given chemicals which made their meat unfit to enter the human food chain. If they are turned into meat meal they could be fed to hogs or chickens, and that would be unhealthy for people.

2. There was a case of dogs who became ill after being fed horse meat, and it was feared that this diseases could be spread from sick dogs to people. It seems strange that dead race horses would be fed to live greyhound racing dogs, but I guess it happens.

3. Americans don't eat horses. What happens is that tax money is used to regulate and inspect the horse meat industry but then the horse meat is exported. So the horse meat company is getting government workers to do some of the work, but Americans aren't profiting from it - our food inspection process are set up to protect us, not to protect the whole world, free of charge.

It is to this last item, that I address the issue of cattle on public land, and do these cattle benefit Americans?

If the rancher pays a token sum (less than what a hiking club would pay) for use of public land, then I expect his cattle should feed America.

If his cattle are sold, or fattened and then sold, overseas, then the American public is not profiting from American lands, and our public paid food inspection process is being used by business for a foreign country.

If that were the case, then the rancher is getting the lease, but the end result is a foreign country getting cheaper beef. IF that were the case, then I would say that the rancher should have to bid for the lease and the hiking club should get to bid too.

But, it is never that simple, is it? While ranchers out west get to use public lands, small land owners who run a few cattle on their property each year to keep down the weeds and make a little money, have complained that letting the western ranchers graze cattle on public lands, brings down the price of their cattle, and they feel this is unfair.

Cattle raiser can be divided. Many western ranches do not produce ready-for-market beef. They run cows and a few bulls. What they sell are weaned calves, or not-finished steers. The calves are bought by feed lots and fattened up.

If you are a person who buys calves from western ranchers, you might like getting a good deal on calves, but if you are an eastern rancher who sells calves for fattening, then you are going to feel that the western ranchers get favors.

Back and forth, back and forth the debate continues.

Now about horses and burros on public lands. Don't waste my time trying to tell me that they graze harder than cattle.

If the equines are in Public Park lands, where no cattle are allowed, then the equines are destroying natural habitat.

But if the horses are on land, where after they are shot, the only change is that now more cattle can be grazed there, then why shoot the horses?

So that a business man can make more money running more cattle on public land, at a lease price of less than what a hiking club would pay to lease the land?

Wild Horses 1

I found myself not in complete agreement with terrierman on the subject of feral horses and burros on government lands.

http://www.terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/
Sat. Nov 21, 2009 - "Sheryl Crow is an Idiot"

Not that I am going to comment on Sheryl - she can speak for herself - but I do want to speak about animals on public lands.

I love natural lands, but life just isn't that simple, and neither is the "multiple use policy" of the BLM (Bureau of Land Management). BLM lands aren't meant to just be for animals, trees, miners, or recreation - it is meant to have multiple uses.

I am NOT an authority, but here it is, as I understand it to be, with my opinion added.

Multiple use means the land does get used a lot - it isn't treated the same way that National PARKS are. Traditionally public lands have been logged, mined, and had cattle grazing on them.
Today, the old policies die hard, but other people than the usual users of land are interested in it. People like to hike, hunt, fish, and play on public land, and some of those people don't want the trees cut down, the land tore up, and they don't want it turned into a feed lot.

That is part of what multiple use is. That is what land management is about. Ranchers are allowed to graze cattle, but not so many that the land becomes a feed lot.

Rules vary from state to state and depend on which agency controls that piece of land. There is federal land, state land, and various agencies control different hunks of land.

Hikers have said that they are legally permitted to hike a piece of land but have been kept off it by the person who only leases the right to run cattle on the land - not the land itself. And that those ranchers run many more cattle than what they are allowed and what they pay to graze there.

Ranchers have said they pay the full amount, never run extra cattle, and the hikers are a problem because they leave gates open.

I'm sure that there are bad ranchers and bad hikers, as well as good ranchers and good hikers.

Back to policy. There have been people who have wanted to pay more than what the ranchers pay to run cattle on public land, just to let the land lay fallow.

In other words, a hiking group might say that for every $100 a rancher will pay to be permitted to run cattle on that piece of pulic land, we will pay $101 to lease it, but we won't run any cattle, we will just let the land recover.

It sounds like a good deal - but not to the rancher. The ranchers have said that being out of business for a year would be too hard on them.

People wanting the land to revert to it's natural state view the rancher as selfishly standing in the way of a whole group of people who would have been able to enjoy the land for generations to come.

From the rancher's point of view: he provides meat for the whole country, and a small group of hikers are selfishly standing in front of Americans and their food supply.

Meat

When I first got out of high school, I went to hear a Holy man speak. He talked about, how just by breathing, we killed tiny living things, that every step squashed tiny living things. I wanted to know how I could avoid killing these tiny living beings without dieing or being miserable.

He said "You can't, but you are automatically forgiven for killing them, because you must do so to survive." At the time, that seemed so wise and kind. But, as he pointed out, there was nothing I could do about it - so what was the point of his talking about it?

But I did know one thing that I could do, I could become a vegetarian. So I quit eating meat.

I never knew that I was an obligate carnivore until I actually tried giving up meat.

I had dieted to lose weight before, but this was nothing like that. It was a hunger that changed how I felt. Like a hungry hawk in yauk, I become more alert.

I could feel myself paying more attention to the physical world. Books did not hold my attention, walking and watching the world were the things that I felt like doing.

To just say "I became more alert" does not tell it like it really is. If you do not feed a lion, he does not become a sheep - what you get is a hungry lion.

And you can often see, just by looking, if an animal is hunting or when it is full and content. I did not feel content even when I ate extra potatoes and bread.

I felt restless, I felt like roaming, I felt a craving.

Not just like "Oh, I could go for an ice cream, or I'd really like Chinese Food." But a hunger with direction that I could not dismiss. The smell of a roast cooking - I just could not ignore it.

It was a very unpleasant feeling - unless you like going through life feeling hungry.

Some people have said that they gave up meat, and it never bothered them. But later, I read in a book on anthropology about a man who lived with a tribe in Africa, and wrote about it. He said they have two words for hunger, regular hunger for calories, and another word for craving meat. I decided that I was not alone.

I decided that, although I love animals, I was not made to be a vegetarian. You can not fault the tiger for needing meat to eat, no more than you can fault a deer for eating leaves. Each does what they can. Each lives as they were meant to.

I don't think I could have survived without meat. I think I would have become malnourished if I had not realized that I could not continue on the meatless path.

I do know this: Without meat I feel more like a carnivore, than I had with meat.

That may sound strange, but how many of you have tried giving up meat?

To both those who think that there is no such thing as a craving for protein, and those who think that a carnivore can be content without meat, I ask why so many Americans would not think of giving up meat? Is it because they have felt a touch of malnourishment before?

Other might say, that in their country there are people who do not eat meat. And I have a relative who was a vegetarian for years - but gave it up to get married. And another relative who was a vegetarian for much of her adult life.

But, for me it did not work out.

So am I less for having tried but failed, than what I would have been had I not tried at all?

Or am I less for having tried at all? Depends on your point of view doesn't it?

I respect the deer, but I respect the tiger too.

TRICKling through the Internet

Quite sometime back, I first heard about Germany banning pit bulls. Someone who had Internet service in her house had read about it on the Internet, but couldn't provide details as all her information was of the "somebody said that somebody said, that someone else told them" sort.

I did NOT have Internet where I lived, and had to go to a public place and use their computers. It was very time consuming and I was extremely inexperienced. But I was very persistent, because I had made this like a test, I would find this in German and I would get a German speaking person to tell me what it said (I did not know of computer translations, if they had them then).

I googled it/yahooed it and got a huge number of hits, but whenever I would click on a hit, it would have absolutely nothing to do with what I was looking for. I kept at it. I just kept slogging through. I would go home and complain about the worthlessness of computers because it was like "Trying to find a needle in a haystack".

I was really discouraged. But I knew the information had to be online somewhere. I didn't want secondhand information, I wanted a link to the actual German Law that I could have translated by someone who I know who speaks German.

I would google it, and get a list of 'hits' supposedly of what I wanted, but when I would click on them, all that would come up would be a photo of a little kid beside a pit bull.

What would you think?

After awhile it dawned on me that these lies probably had one source. That somewhere out there some one or some group was somehow placing this Internet filibuster in my path.

The photos were NOT of the same kid, or the same pit bull. I decided to study the photos for clues.

All the pit bulls looked clean, many of them fresh washed - sign of a breeder - breeders photo fresh washed dogs, regular people photo their dogs when company comes or for some event or on a nice day or when they go somewhere. Not that regular people don't photo their dog right after a bath too - but not like breeders do.

For a breeder, the dog is the focus of the photo, for pet people, the dog is only part of the photo. Often the photos had the dog in the center of the photo, the child would sometimes have an arm or part of the head cropped out of the photo - the pit bull was what the photo was about.

After awhile, I noticed something else, almost all of the kids were preschool aged. And most of them were girls. The girls were dressed in summer clothes, but often the clothes were wrinkled and the girl's hair uncombed. The dogs were clearly (to me then) the focus of the photos.

These were not your usual false hits. The title would read like "Exact words of German Pit Bull Ban Here." but it would just be a photo - the same kind of photo: a preschool age girl and a pit bull.

What would you think? I figured that I was being deliberately misled. Finally, I thought "What would these people call their club?" And I found it. Not under "pitbull" but under one of the gussy upped purebred names of the breed.

There it was, a post by a pit bull club asking its members to each put a kid & dog photo under the title of the German Pitbull Ban so as to swamp google so that Americans would not find it, read it, and try to get a pit bull ban here.

So I knew who was filibustering the Internet, and why, but I still had to find the German law. I kept thinking what would they say, trying to see it as they would, and I found a bunch of posts with the German name of the law on it , all with only a photo of a little girl and a pit bull, but now I knew the German words for it.

Finally, I found where someone (not a pit bull person) had posted it in German, and in translation. It didn't say that much - just that they were banning fighting dog breeds , and a list of the banned breeds, including pit bulls.

It might be unreasonable, feelings usually are, but I just can't ever feel good about anything posted by pit bull people since.

The Goal

Most puppies are sold as pets.

What does a family need in a pet puppy?

A person who wants a working dog is looking for an extreme in behavior - that is a large part of what made the types of dogs what they are.

If you want a greyhound, you want a sprinting dog. If you want a tracking hound - you want a dog that will follow his nose for hours.

If you want a herding dog, you want a dog with such ingrained behavioral traits that he lives to herd sheep - and he does it right.

But if you want to produce good pet dogs from a collection of working and hunting breeds, what you want is to delete those genes that code for extreme behaviors.

You don't want to breed huskies that want to run all day.

You don't want to breed dogs that obsess over birds or sheep.

But you want to produce healthy puppies. No fair breeding flat faced dog who aren't hyper because they have to work just to breathe. NO fair getting nice lap dogs who seem so sweet just because they are too in pain to be active.

You want to breed out the hunting, herding, fighting, competing genes. Work to produce dogs who have good social skills with other dogs and people.

Produce dogs who are not startled or upset by noises, or activity, but who are responsive to people.

Produce dogs who can be left alone, loose in the house, are easy to housebreak, who don't bark often, and who really are good with people.

Finally!

Yes, that is the whole idea.

The way we are breeding dogs needs to change with the times - to modernise.

It doesn't make sense for a person in an apartment, who never herds sheep, who has only seen sheep out of a car window, or at a fair, to work at producing dogs that herd sheep.

Such a person, lacks the knowledge about sheep, which they need to be able to properly control the future of sheep herding dogs. That is best left to sheep ranchers.

Ditto with coonhounds. They can be great pets, but if you sell them as pets, breed them to be good healthy pets. If you sell them as coon hunting dogs, then breed them to be good at hunting raccoons.

One of the problems, is what to do with the puppies who are not good at what they were bred to be?

When you mate 2 dogs that do the same type of work, and who are from dogs that have all been good at that type of work for several generations, than most all of the puppies will be good at that type of work - with some training.

This is because you are only insisting that the dogs be able to do the work well.

When dogs are bred for competition, then looking like a show dog, or just doing the event well, is NOT good enough - people who want dogs that win, want dogs that win.

So only the most likely to win puppies are needed - the others aren't wanted for the use they were bred for.

And that is a problem. Pit bull puppies bred to fight, but who lack what it takes to fight, are sold as pets. Border Collies who lack what it takes to find a rancher to buy them to work his sheep, are sold as pets.

And in even larger numbers, puppies bred to be show dogs are sold as pets.

Dog Nazis?

If you are going to be a control freak, first make sure that the ideas that you insist upon, are correct.

Like, if dog breeders are suppose to kill all the German Shepherd puppies that are born white - then you should be able to show that white puppies are not as good as tan puppies - and plenty of people have kept and bred the white German Shepherd puppies, and they say that their white puppies are just like the tan colored puppies.

Or like Pedigree Dogs Exposed said: the Rhodesian Ridgebacks that DON'T have the hair growing the wrong way are killed - so the normal puppies are the ones being killed. And only the Rhodesian Ridgebacks with the mutation are being shown.

But of course, if the point is to have a fr--k show, then normal dogs aren't allowed.

Why not allow all of the dogs? Breed nice healthy friendly dogs that like people and other pets, or who have some useful work to do.

Stop the silly dog shows. Or transform them into useful events.