FUGLY is Retiring

I’m sad to note today that Fugly Horse of the Day… AKA Cathy, is retiring.

I have read her blog for several years, although admittedly stopped reading it religiously when I started this blog.  I didn’t want to see what she was writing, as I was writing.  There have been an occasion or two when we’ve covered the same or similar stories, and I was glad I hadn’t read her blog first.  I really wanted my voice and opinions to come through without being influenced by hers.  I do, however, respect her enough that I linked to her blog on my front page.

I think FUGLY served a great purpose, and I wanted to do something similar but with a more “Canadian” slant.  I have covered some American stories; the ones that really caught my eye, and will continue to do so.  But I still really want to find those uniquely Canadian stories.

It sounds like the blog is up for sale.  I checked out the listing, and it says the top bid was $8500 but it didn’t sell.  I assume that means it had a reserve and the reserve wasn’t met.  It almost scares me that someone who was pro-slaughter would take it over and start ripping her posts apart with their rhetoric.  She very specifically says…

It sells with the domain and the rights to all content written to date, which I suspect could be quite lucrative for someone who knows what they are doing (I don’t, and I’m too busy to find out). It is selling to the public with no restrictions; it may or may not go to someone who wishes to continue doing a blog about this subject matter.

And as a final note, here is a list of things she hopes people have learned, if they didn’t know already:

Horse Slaughter Arguments

After reading comments on many, many pages from pro-slaughter activists, I’ve noticed there are “trends” to the arguments they use.  Below are some of the most common pro-slaughter arguments, and my response to them.   Most of the arguments were copied and pasted exactly as-is from a multitude of different pages.

I did, previously, have a list of arguments started (https://notabreed.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/horse-slaughter-why/)… but I’ve come across more so thought I’d do another one.

I also created a page with some possible “solutions”, and would love some more feedback:  https://notabreed.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/horse-slaughter-solutions/

And now on to the arguments:

Unless you are a vegan, you are a hypocrite to say horse slaughter should be banned.

There are three reasons this statement is blatantly untrue.

Grace – The Horse with the Amazing Spirit Passes

Grace the horse dies, lives on through facebook page

ANNE CREIGHTON
The News-Review

Strawberry Mountain Mustangs founder and director Darla Clark of Dixonville talks this morning about the death of Grace, a rescue horse who died Thursday after fighting an intestinal obstruction. Behind her is a current stable horse.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN / The News-Review

A photo taken of Grace shortly after her seizure in August. She weight 560 pounds, almost 500 pounds less than her normal weight. courtesy photo

Ralph Horney is Selling Emaciated Horses… with PHOTOS?

Ok.  This one takes the cake.  Some dumbass, who’s real name appears to be Ralph Horney (no wonder he never puts his name in ads), is trying to sell his “buckskin” horse in Kentucky… except she’s so thin it’s criminal.  Literally.

So, I sent the Chief of Police, Ronnie J. Bastin an email.  It is below.

GAO Report… Thank You

The GAO – US Government Accountability Office – was tasked with investigating and reporting on the unintended consequences of cessation of slaughter on US soil.  The report is in, and it’s very interesting.  As I am wont to do, I have commented on the report, point by point.

Heading In to be Slaughtered

Main Body of Report

Since domestic horse slaughter ceased in 2007, the slaughter horse market has shifted to Canada and Mexico. From 2006 through 2010, U.S. horse exports for slaughter increased by 148 and 660 percent to Canada and Mexico, respectively. As a result, nearly the same number of  U.S. horses was transported to Canada and Mexico for slaughter in 2010–nearly 138,000–as was slaughtered before domestic slaughter ceased.

(my bold)

At Least He Starved His OWN Horses More than the Boarders Horses?

Jason Ashley, from Ludowici, Georgia, Briarwood Stables off of Stafford Dairy Road, starved 18 horses at his unlicensed “training and boarding” facility.

Jason Ashley

Jason apparently owned a few of the horses, and those were the most neglected.  They were a body score of 1-2.  The rest of the horses, the boarders horses, were slightly better, at maybe a 2-3.

Jason Ashley, the stable operator and owner of the three horses in the worst shape…

Oh, did I mention Jason is apparently on parole for something?

Horses Starving and Injured while SPCA “Monitors”. Again.

The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is up to it again.  For a month now the SPCA out of Hamilton have been monitoring six horses on a property in Millgrove.  The horses are malnourished, have rain rot, some are injured, but all are nice, sweet horses that are desperate for food, water and love.

A neighbour called the SPCA to report the horses.  The owner of the horses does not live there.  I have to wonder who DOES live there.  If you watch the video, you’ll see a house…  Are those people sitting in their living room, watching six horses slowly starve to death while collecting the rent on the barn and land?

Crime Crawlers

Well, I may have mentioned it earlier in a comment somewhere… but I wanted to make it official.  I am now officially a writer over at Crime Crawlers.   What does that mean?  Well, it means I have yet another venue to get the word out about horse slaughter, abuse and neglect.  I will still continue to cover stories here at NotABreed, especially stories about slaughter.

Crime Crawlers has been around for a while, but the owner of the blog (ThinkGoat) has written extensively for true crime venues for quite some time even before that.  I am honored, and flattered, to have been asked to write for them.  True crime has always been a passion of mine.  I think I own every book Ann Rule has ever written.  I actually remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when Ted Bundy was much deservedly put to death.

All that being said, please head over to see my very first story over there.  Below is the direct link to my post about Marie Tooker – a so-called philanthropist who recently decided it was better to padlock her horses in a barn with no food and water than to allow the bankruptcy investigators to see the ones in the worst shape.  Unfortunately for her, the investigators called the sheriffs anyway, because the horses they did see on the property were emaciated and had no food or water available to them either.

Link:  http://crimecrawlers.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/marie-tooker-had-them-snookered/

Just SOME of the Horses at Marie Tookers House of Horrors

I hope you stick around here at NotABreed, as well as read the posts over at Crime Crawlers.  They do great work, and have a sarcastic bite that I just love – weird how they made me feel right at home…

Copy and Paste Comments

I’ve recently commented on a couple of articles published regarding slaughter.  What irks me is that when these articles discuss the reasoning behind whether slaughter should be reinstated in the US, they completely miss some pretty major points.

Some articles, like this one out of Nebraska regarding legislation to deal with the unwanted horse problem are really well written.  The first paragraph really had me thinking “wow, this guy really sees things clearly”!

If you think the unwanted horses issue is complicated, try breaking down the language used to talk about it. The conversation gets blurry from all the politically charged and politically correct language, not to mention all the rhetorical devices, like euphemisms, hyperboles, paradoxes and anacoluthons (deliberate changes in grammatical construction within a sentence). You can almost guess a speaker’s position by the connotation of the words he or she uses. Does he say horses are slaughtered? Or does he say they are rendered, harvested, or sent down the road?

He remains impassive and unemotional in the discussion, and seems to try to show both sides of several points.  I think what surprised me most about the article was this quote from PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk: