Why are horse people so quick to kill their horses when they break a leg?
I understand thst prosthetics that give a horse the ability to gallop are a fairly new thing thing, but horse owners are so quick to kill their horses and act like it's the right thing to do when quality prosthetics finally exist?
They outright demonize modern prosthetics that allow horses to live respectable lives after breaking a leg, what is their problem?
Because horse is delicious and they're just waiting for an excuse to feast on their succulent flesh
Horses can weigh up to a ton.
Your 20 lb dog can sit on his ass for three months while his leg heals, but a horse cannot. The muscle atrophy will prevent it from lifting its own body.
Get a prosthetic? Old men get gnarly rashes where they're leg meets a prosthetic, and they weigh a 100 lbs. Imagine you're twenty times that weight.
Can it be done? Yes. But the expense, up front and ongoing, is out of the reach of most people, even most horse owners.
>Get a prosthetic? Old men get gnarly rashes where they're leg meets a prosthetic, and they weigh a 100 lbs. Imagine you're twenty times that weight.
>Can it be done? Yes.
You just pointed out one of the big reasons why it cannot be done.
Awful nasty rashes will occur on the side of the prosthetic leg. These rashes are inevitable as well as incredibly painful. Aside from a very real infection risk, it also means that the rashes (along with general discomfort) will mean that the horse will put as little weight on a prosthetic as possible, shifting all that weight onto its other legs and, as previously stated in the thread, that will fuck up those other legs irreparably.
Unfortunately no, it is not possible. Even with all of the money in the world.
It can be done, because people do it.
I'm saying that the amount of money necessary to invest in caring for a horse in that state is beyond the reach of most people, and that includes most people who otherwise have enough disposable income to own a horse for personal enjoyment.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that medical expenses can necessitate putting an animal down. Being unable to afford such an insane bill does not make you a bad person for owning an animal.
Can you imagine telling someone that they shouldn't own a cat if they're not prepared to pay out-of-pocket for leukemia?
Not being able to afford expensive medical treatment doesn't make you a bad person. You can still go buy a horse. You don't need to justify yourself.
No, I don't disagree with what you're saying about the amount of money involved. I agree that there is nothing really morally wrong about people putting down an animal due to inordinate vet bills.
What I am saying is that keeping a horse happy and healthy in prosthetics is impossible, regardless of how much money you can throw at the problem. All the money in the world will not change equine physiology.
A better investment would probably be in prosthetics themselves. Maybe one day they'll make one that won't cause incredible, excruciating pain but that day is not today. All of those images of horses and cows with prosthetic legs on Google are examples of unironic animal abuse.
>What I am saying is that keeping a horse happy and healthy in prosthetics is impossible
Oh. Well, that I agree with. You can keep them physically health, in that they're free of infection and disease, but they're definitely not going to attain the kind of quality of life that a whole horse would have.
I don't want to anthropomorphize the horse by philosophizing about whether the horse would prefer to be dead or alive but crippled. Personally, I'd put the horse down, whether you have the money or not.
All I'm getting from this is that horses are shit animals that can barely stay alive
Pretty much. And people also go out of their way to breed them to be even more fragile because they like the way a lollipop ass looks in a show or so they’ll run fractions of a second faster.
Usually I'd be on the side of breeders, but when it comes to changing the morphology of an already delicate animal, you're playing an incredibly dangerous game.
Pic rel is a post-legged AQH (American Quarter Horse). Do its back legs look wrong to you? Thats bevause they are. It's back legs are unnaturally straight.
This is an attractive quality in AQH breeders who want their horses for halter shows.
Yes, these horses don't tend to be used in other disciplines, because they can't be. Due to their fucked up back legs they're a notoriously rough ride, have difficulties collecting their gaits and landing jumps or being agile in any way.
They are also prone to stifle issues, arthritis and cracked hooves.
In a sense that's not really the fault of their natural form as much as it is from animal breeders. The form of a horse is great for something that just needs to run from predators and eat foliage.
Even cats and dogs today have been screwed hard by morons breeding them for aesthetic or pure breed purposes
most horses are owned by poor farmers, do you think they're willing to spend time and plenty of money to fix a horse
it’s probably fixable but it doesn’t make sense economically
Next time someone's car gets totaled, see what their response is when you ask them to tow it back to their house and leave it in their driveway/garage for the next 20 years. Then, while they're still bewildered, ask them to keep paying insurance on it.
Maybe it'll be able to retain a fraction of its utility, maybe you'll just burn money repairing it.
No telling, really.
This is a good analogy. A not-insignificant amount of horses left in the world are still used as farm equipment, logging equipment etc. And you can debate the ethics of that if you like, but if someones livelihood relies on the health of an animal(s), and it's leg fucks up, and there's no realistic way that it'll ever get fully better (as in, it'll never pull a cart/plough ever again) then sending it to auction will be honestly, a more expensive outcome.
Because it truly is the best thing for them.
Prostetics, even state of the art prosthetics, cannot and will never be able to be usable on hoofed animals, bar some revolutionary jump in their development. Horses cannot survive with 3 legs like dogs and cats can. So, when a leg is injured so severely, so much so that it would take months to fully heal, there is no other option. They can't be off one of their legs for that long a period of time, it would irreparably fuck up all their other legs. And, again, prosthetics are not an option when it comes to horses.
It's not that horse people are so quick to do so, as if they have other options and euthanasia is the 'easiest' its that- in some cases- euthanasia is the ONLY option available.
Unless you think forcing a horse to stay alive, in pain and confused, using an artificial leg that causes it more and more pain every day, is somehow less cruel than giving it a clean and painless death?
What did evolution or creative design mean by this?
When it comes to an animal who's main survival strategy is to run - they're not very good at anything else. Horses require the stability of 4 legs to literally live. Calling them a table isnt entirely inaccurate, they can sleep standing up because they expend so little energy while just standing on all four legs.
It's why recovery from a severe leg injury sometimes just isn't possible. Even something as simple as a fracture can become a death sentence if the horse must keep weight off a leg, or god forbid multiple legs, for more than a few weeks, cause like I said, shifting that weight royally fucks up the legs they have left.
Evolution isn't perfect. It takes what works and just runs with it. Horses are particularly broken though.
Did you know horses cannot vomit? This is why colic is very dangerous. Colic is a catch-all term for over 70 different gastrointestinal issues, and most could honestly be solved if a horse could just vomit.
Then there's also laminitis which effects the hooves. Hooves are surprisingly very delicate, and if something goes wrong just once you genuinely run the risk of crippling your horse for life.
I still wanna horse tho.
I'd like to point out that because of their size, horses can't lie down for protracted periods of time. The pressure caused by their own weight will begin to cause tissue death in their muscles and organs. Their legs are little toothpicks compared to the mass of their bodies. If one leg is injured, or lost, it causes immense stress to the remaining three legs.
Dogs are not always candidates for amputation and prosthetics, either. They're simply too large, or one or more of their other legs is compromised in some way, making euthanasia a more humane option than an amputation. 60% of dogs' weight is carried in their forelegs. If the other foreleg has some sort of mechanical issue, euthanasia might be a better option.
nothing in the wild survives a major injury
Does losing a limb count as a major injury?
To piggyback off of this, does anyone have an estimated death rate from any type of laceration on mammals? I know that infection was a huge problem historically, so I've always wondered if any wound was basically a death sentence.
modern horses are like large tree trunks supported by toothpicks, natural horses which don't exist anymore were probably more resistant
god injects crippling flaws into his creations because he enjoys watching them suffer
only good answers ITT. the rest are incels that have never been within 6 feet of a horse and just want to seethe about women any chance they can
Yeah.
>hey why do (hobby that consists mainly of women) people do (thing that makes sense if you have even a surface level understanding of the subject)
>UHHH UHM *wipes drool off chin* HRMMH, BECAUSE UHH WOMEN ARE.... SNIFFFFF..... UH DUMB. AND UHHHHH EVIL AND SHIT HEHEH
Yeah.
>Can't even strawman properly
>Yeah
cunthurt much?
What strawman? Thats pretty much what happened. Do you mean hyperbole?
reminder that most people super into horses are women. After remembering that, you'll realize why what you said is so.
They fuck their horses' legs? What the fuck.
in lieu of state of the art prosthetics, a horse won't survive the recuperation process for a broken leg - its heart will go to shit if it needs to stay still long enough to heal and the horse will die anyway
Horses are just built to die that way. Sorry.
Horses are livestock with no value beyond the training they have received. If the injury is survivable, but eliminates the utility of the animal for the discipline it was trained for, the injury renders the animal valueless.
Horse maintenance is too expensive for most people to give specialized care to an animal that needs to be replaced because it can’t be utilized for what it was trained to do.
Also not every horse has the correct temperament to allow them to recover safely from major injury.
Unfortunately this, a shame one of Earth’s most beautiful creatures has been relinquished to a tool that once broken cannot be fixed. At least we get to appreciate them that way, I guess
I have horses as pets, as they provide no value as livestock since I'm not Amish. But as far as
, anything vet related for horses is more expensive than your dog/cat vet bills. Breaking a leg doesn't just mean fixing the injury or replacing the leg. The rehab process and period is fuckin rough and also very expensive if you don't keep your horse in a stall already. It's more complicated than a regular pet injury, and for most people, the cost that comes with it is too high. As for show horses and such, they don't break legs because they don't leave their stalls unless they're at a show.
> I have horses as pets, as they provide no value as livestock since I'm not Amish.
Are they just pasture ornaments you give nose scratches to, are you a pleasure rider, or do you perform any sort of riding discipline with them?
You don’t have to be Amish to get value (not necessarily economic output) from a horse, you just have to do something with it. I do hunting trials and am part of a club that does long hunting style trail rides with fence crossings (my wife just does pleasure riding, she takes the bypasses instead of crossing the fences, when the club rides), this is the value my horses bring me. If my horse takes and injury that prevents him from participating in the discipline, I have to replace him or give up the sport, and buying a trained horse suitable for doing this discipline with a 175lb man on his back would cost in the neighborhood of $15,000. If that happens, I’m not exactly in a position where it’s trivial to decide to blow $5k on lifesaving emergency surgery, additional thousands on supportive care during a 6-12 month recovery period, and then winter feed and normal ongoing medical care to downgrade my horse to a spare pleasure rider my children might utilize in 3-5 years (best case)or pasture ornament.
Aging out of sport is different, because then I have time to raise up a colt or filly to take his place (and suitable yearlings are MAYBE worth a thousand dollars unless you want a breeder and the rights to breed it), and by the time that happens, I’ll have a use for a mellowing oldster for my children to ride anyways.
This is what happens when poorfags involve themselves in hobbies they can't afford. If you can't afford to care for your pets then you shouldn't have them and horses are not an exception to this rule. If $10k in medical costs is some huge, impossible expense to you then you're too poor to own a horse.
That said, I understand that irresponsible and callous people will ignore this but they will be punished in due time.
Brother, what
It's not common and it's not fun, but if it's a work horse then you're not just talking about the thousands in initial medical care.
We're looking at cost of care and specialized follow-up treatments/checkups for the rest of that horses life.
It'll also need regular special attention from you while it HOPEFULLY gets past that initial recovery period.
PLUS,
you've gotta source, purchase, and begin to train/work with a whole new horse in the meantime.
The time you've had to balance before now gets stretched even thinner.
The fewer you have, the less buffer you have to deal with illnesses and other minor injuries, so God forbid you only have the one and now have to find a way to make due without. That'll run you even more to lease one, pay for help, or drop money on a vehicle if it's capable of filling the role temporarily.
If you think horses are purely for hobby, you're dumb as shit.
They are purely for hobby. What they aren’t is purely pets.
It is what it is, but I agree to disagree.
Funny, because I’ve seen literal billionaires put horses down for a green stick fracture that I would have spent the $2000 and 4 months to splint and heal. Only the most over-socialized mush heads would not put a horse down for an actual bad break. The loss of function makes it not worth it no matter what your income looks like.
The horse in question was one that had probably $200,000 worth of training, and monthly chiropractic and acupuncture sessions.
I'm sure you're fun at parties sasuke-senpai
Because they see horses as a hobby.