Thursday, January 9, 2014

Horses abandoned at an alarming rate in Whatcom County | KING5.com Seattle

 So sad, horses are intelligent creatures and if you have ever owned or worked with horses you know that they each have their own personalities, they show love, humor and yes even anger so to just abandon them they way its been happening is so sad. A horse left in a pasture may have a chance to survive, but a horse left to walk down the street or abandoned in a stall somewhere will surely die.

People today have this belief with most animals that have been bread to be and kept as pets can easily revert to the life of their wild ancestors, but that is not true.

An example that is probably heard the most is for dogs, I have heard people say what is the big deal because dogs where bread originally from the wolf so if they are left to their own devices they should be able to hunt for food and their fur should keep them warm during winter, but these beliefs are not true.

The same goes for horses, yes they where originally bread from the wild mustangs found in the American wild after the original settlers of America abandoned them hundreds of years ago on the plains (When America was discovered there were no wild horses on this continent), because the horse was brought here from Europe.

Here is what happens to these domesticated animals, over the hundreds or thousands of years since they where domesticated they loose much of the hardiness and way of thinking that their original ancestors possessed. When they are abandoned in this way many die of starvation and exposure because it has been bread into their way of thinking and survival instincts to look for the human hand when they are hungry, hurt or cold and when that human hand isn't there they tend to give in and die.

Now don't get me wrong, a few horses and dogs survive being abandoned, growing up on a Kansas farm I saw a pack of dog's that ran the pastures, ranches and farms that wanted nothing to do with humans but the problem was they where still relying most times on humans to survive by raiding farms for chickens, ducks and sometimes calves, lambs and colts, they had become feral and pests to the point the even raided trash cans for food. Like I said above some horses abandoned in pastures often survived as we did occasionally find a horse on a ranch that we didn't know where they came from.

Other animals have a better chance on surviving if abandoned such as pigs and cats. Pigs often are not abandoned, but are notorious for escaping from pens and going feral to the point by the second generation of a feral pig their appearance begin to look like wild boars and even act like them, so they are usually successful. Lastly I don't think I have to go into how cats survive, we see stray cats all the time. Even if they are still with their owners they act and can survive in the "wild".     



Horses abandoned at an alarming rate in Whatcom County | KING5.com Seattle

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