Lacking a vet, Quebec family shoots dying horse
cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-resident-f...
cbc.caPosted May 11, 2023, 12:31 PM UTC
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cbc.caWelcome to the country. The vet was only called when there was a potential for saving or making money, so if a cow was having problems calving, etc. The vet was never called for end of life situations.
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Better than letting it continue to suffer. The mare had lived a full life, so this was a kindness even if it didn't feel like it at the time.
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Slow news day
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Not having any way to transport your horse, and no one you could call to transport your horse is not a vet problem. Even in the same article it mentions someone else that trailers their 23 horses for vet care. Being unable to get a vet to come out to your house for 9+ months and not even attempting to secure transportation for your animal during that time? Nowhere in that article did I read there wasn't a vet available, only that there wasn't one that could drive 2+ hours to your house.
Horses are always a stones throw away from dying, whether that is a GI issues ( colic, twisted intestine ) or any of the other myriad of problems that can occur ( postholing, eating something they shouldn't, they can even die from exercise ).
This article stinks of privilege. If my cat or dog is sick, I take them to a vet. You not having an appropriate means of transporting that animal is on you, no one else.
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You have a 31 year old horse and no transport, yeah like you said horses are almost always close to death and at 31 that just seems crazy not to have it figured out whats going to happen when shit goes sideways and shit always goes sideway when you have horses
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If it was going to die anyway there was no need to truck it to a vet. This is livestock not a pet. Bullets/shells are cheap and have been reliable used for this purpose as long as there have been firearms.
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I compared it to a pet because it is a hobby farm, how this article presents it and how they respond. When told on the phone by a vet
"He said we're looking at euthanasia … And he said 'I would be able to come to put her down, to euthanize her, but only in the evening sometime.'"
They had their answer, and a solution in hand to be humane, yet for some reason they dragged on the suffering.
Fletcher says she managed to get Crescent walking for 10 minutes across the property, and wondered how they would manage her pain for the next 12-plus hours until the veterinarian arrived.
Even if they weren't willing to ease it's pain themselves, 12hrs > 2hrs if they trucked it to a vet to be put down. Not having a trailer also means other more trivial things required people to come to them.
The article annoys me in many ways and privilege was about the most polite way I could word it. It comes across as blaming a vet that took her own life for not being available which was an inconvenience, other vets for not immediately replacing her, other vets for not dropping everything to come to their farm because the ones responsible for the animal in life didn't want to be responsible in death. Just like a pet.
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There’s nothing inhumane about shooting a large animal to put it down, it’s an instantaneous death, with the benefit you don’t end up with a large carcass contaminated with drugs that would kill any predator that got hold of it.
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Who said it was inhumane? Of course it's humane, I said as much with "a solution in hand to be humane" in reference to the firearm they had.
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Comment section isn't going the way OP was hoping, I see. Good.
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Even with a vet, you still gotta call the dead livestock guy to hook the horse up and winch it into a trailer full of dead cattle and horses.
Either way it's not pretty. As they used to say, it's to the glue factory with them.
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Ahh yes I remember the first time I got a look into the back of that truck from the top floor window of my house…I asked my step father- who was a farmer in a previous life. “Dog food” was his response.
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I just dig a hole.
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Technically in some places you can't
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Easier if you have a backhoe or front end loader to just dig a hole.
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AB is the largest exporter of horse meat in the world.
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Super sad to see Carey Price go out this way.
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A lack of vets is indeed a story, but I should point out that what eventually happened is something that plays out at farms across canada on a regular basis.
My father had to shoot one of our cows that was mauled by a loose dog, for a single example from our farm.
Putting down your own animals when they are sick, mortally wounded or just for regular slaughter for meat, is something farmers do themselves all the time. Vets may be too remote, or just too expensive.
If it is something you cant or wont handle on your own, dont own farm animals.
You can't have livestock without deadstock.
Its part of the life, for sure.
My mum was never terribly cool with guns, but after a problematic nearby "farm" that hoarded animals ended up calling us to see if they could borrow a rifle to put down a mortally injured sheep, she told me "it is negligence to own and care for animals, without having some way to put them out of their misery like this. To have a large farm like them, all those poor animals and not so much as a .22 in the attic is appalling".
I wasnt around to go help them, and I had the safe key, they apparently told her they were considering sharpening a shovel and trying to kill it that way. Thankfully, another local farmer came through for the poor sheep.
Livestock work is generally thankless. This Spring I had a healthy cow drown in a pothole that was probably 1 foot deep. The way things melted so quick all the depressions filled with water. We think she must have slipped on the ice underneath the water and then panicked and took in a breath of water. The pothole was the size of 2 trucks and less deep than my rubber boots on the edge. Maybe it was 2 feet deep in the middle. There was still bubbles coming up when I got there.
Ridiculous and sad.
Gotdamn!
I'd have never thought a cow could drown in 1 ft of water.
WTH?