12-16-08

We got an update from Deb about Starvin' Marvin's first night. "We let Marvin stay in the brick entry way. We put an entire package of puppy training pads down, he did pretty well. He snuggled up on the carpet in another part of the hall and went to sleep. This morning he went outside and had his breakfast. He has a huge appetite and once he runs out of hay he will try to eat anything else in sight. He got to say hi to the big horses. Then he got a nice warm shower because he had so much mud crusted on his tummy. After he was completely dry and well fed he went outside to the dog pen in his new rain poncho without the dogs of course. He likes it inside the big dog house. Perfect fit and it's close enough I can keep an eye on him. He is demanding cable and Internet access but I think that is pushing it."

"Napping in the hall, at least until the flash went off in his face."

"The cats are extremely confused about a horse being inside while they are outside. Very twilight zone . I found them all huddled up in the horse trailer later on. I hope this hasn't caused permanent identity issues for them."

"When we remodel this bathroom we will have to remember to put in hay racks for the shower stall." Today Tawnee showed horses to potential adopters all day, including the downpour we had for a good hour. The folks that had Cody in adoption pending came up today. Cody was not a great match for them, so they looked around at others and fell in love with a couple. Endure, shown below, and...

...the horse we said was a stallion from the last auction. Upon evaluation though, we found out his papers are wrong, he appears to be a gelding and his demeanor backs it up. You just never know what you are going to get from the auction, so far we have gotten a mare that turned out to be a gelding and a stallion that turned out to be a gelding, all at the same auction on the same day. His registration papers say stallion, but somewhere along the line he must have been gelded. That is wonderful news for him! No painful surgery and it saves the rescue some much needed funds to help other horses.

Ron came to the rescue very late last night with two horses that were sent up for the euthanasia clinic. One of them is extremely crippled and in constant severe pain. The other one is a 20 year old brood mare, sweet and healthy seen below. It really had all our hearts sad to think that she was unwanted. Then, a wonderful lady came out today and they fell in love! She is now in adoption pending and she will be going home as soon as the lady is approved to adopt. Thank you so much Ann for opening your heart and home to this sweet horse.

Ron came out to the rescue today with some donated feed. We would like to thank Wal-Mart for their continued support by donating their broken bags of feed and the Animal Shelter for donating feed also.

Jason and Ron got right to work unloading the many bags of feed into the tack room.

Ron and Claire have graciously offered to foster one of the pregnant mares so she can have 24/7 supervision, and they are really looking forward to the baby experience.

There is a comment on yesterdays blog that states: "The killer buyers I've seen at other sales do not target RLA because it's a small sale. It costs way too much money to send a horse over the border to be slaughtered. They're not going to buy a $100 horse at RLA and pay $500 to send it to Mexico. It just doesn't make sense money wise for the killer buyers to do so."

That's right, killer buyers do attend lots of other auctions, and the exact same guys also go to Roseville. We've been to many other other auctions, and the kb's are easy to spot. When the price hits the bottom they nod to the auctioneer and the price starts going up. There were horses that sold for $50 at the last auction. If you go to Fallon Livestock Exchanges website, adult dier horses (horses that are sold for slaughter) are selling for 10-26 cents a lb, that is $100-$260 for a 1,000 lb horse. And yes, the KB's make a lot of money paying that for horses and then sending them to slaughter. It may take $500 to send a truck to Mexico, but when you have 15 horses in a trailer, that is only $33 a horse. They certainly don't worry about feed and water on the trip, so the math is simple from a KB's perspective: buy a horse for $100 at the auction, spend $33 to ship it to Mexico, get a nice fat wad of cash. It's really sad there are people that would be willing to ship horses to slaughter, over 100,000 so far this year. And yes, many of those come from the state of California.