About once a month, I have a serious laundry day. It’s the day I collect up all the odds and ends as well as the regular laundry so I’m going to have a number of small loads as well as the usual full loads and it will be a full and long day of work. I don’t mind doing laundry and I love it when it’s all clean and fresh, folded and put away, fresh bedding and even clean smelling dogs since they usually get a bath that day as well. At the end of the day, I’m filthy and sweaty. I get ready for a shower and drop my clothes into the laundry basket that’s been empty for an hour. How depressing! Laundry day is wonderfully productive and Laundry Day Bites because the thrill of having it all done is merely an illusion.
I’ll spend the next 2 weeks doing day to day cleaning and chores and laundry and then have a House Cleaning Day. That’s the day I do the more detailed house cleaning; another couple of weeks of day to day and back to Laundry Day. Such is life when one actually lives in a home with a family/pets.
“citations… for manure in stalls -- not excessive manure in stalls, just manure in stalls. Except for the moment when I complete cleaning a stall, my stalls have manure in them…; for bedding that is not clean and dry, with a comment on a lack of daily cleaning… The bedding in my stalls is clean and dry until a horse pees, which is usually right after I put down fresh bedding…; for lack of fresh, clean water. . . . My water buckets are fresh and clean until a horse drinks from them, and then their saliva mixed with hay and grain makes them messy, no longer fresh and clean.” The voice of a real animal caretaker cited for code violations by the irrational government agent who expects one to stand over each animal like a nanny waiting, hand and foot, on an ultra spoiled child.
This situation relates back a couple of years. In 2007, the City condemned some stables on Retreat Street. “When the city moved 51 horses and ponies out of Retreat Street, they all appeared to be in good health. The building, however, was considered too dangerous to continue to house the animals. City officials pledged to help find the a-rabs a better place… But more than two years later, the horses and ponies were still under tents under a bridge near South Fulton Avenue, and the area had become unsanitary and infested with rats.” Then the City issues multiple citations for violations and then… “On Nov. 10, Baltimore Health Department officials, working with the Humane Society of the United States, confiscated 19” of these horses.
6 of the 16 citations issued by the City were for paperwork violations. 8 of the remaining for the items quoted above and similar nonsense. At best, there may be 2 significant violations (“harness sores -- one each on three horses -- and two lacerations or cuts on one horse's leg”) that truly needed addressed. “$6,000 in fines” for 8 of these horses and who knows how much for the other 11! Surely the City could have worked with the owners but, no, in they ceme and seized the animals.
“Mr. Wood believes the a-rabs' rights to purse a livelihood have been violated by an overzealous city government taking its cues from the humane society.”
“Bob Wood is an experienced horseman who runs the Triple Creek Farm riding and training operation in Carlisle, Pa. He took an interest in the a-rabs after reading news reports and seeing photographs of the city's horse confiscation in November. ‘I saw horses with [healthy] round bottoms,’ he says, ‘and something about this didn't add up.’… Mr. Wood, who has trained horses for polo and cross-country jumping for 40 years, says the city has ‘moved the goal posts’ on what traditionally constitutes mistreatment to shutter a stable, and horse owners everywhere should be concerned. ‘If [city health officials] move the standard from real neglect – malnutrition, abuse, lameness – to this kind of stuff,’ Mr. Wood says, ‘then anyone can have their horses taken from them.’” I disagree with Mr. Wood on only one small point. I would say he is too narrow in his concerns. ALL ANIMAL OWNERS EVERYWHERE SHOULD BE CONCERNED.
I don’t know whether the City intended to set these horse owners up for this fall when they instigated the whole mess in 2007 by their condemnation of the stable and subsequent hollow promises. I don’t really care. To the extent that these horses were in any kind of need, the City contributed to the problems and it has no business exacerbating by seizing these animals. What of the horses that weren’t seized? Are they next?
“At the time the horses were seized, the Humane Society of the United States said ‘many of the horses were suffering from medical ailments including parasite infestation, malnutrition and extremely overgrown hooves.’” I’m QUITE sure these organizations have developed a shared checklist of these awful sounding allegations that are in fact vague and meaningless but which tug at the public’s emotions. I’m sure because we just keep seeing and hearing the same sound bites over and over and over. If it were really what they suggest, they would post up pictures and veterinary records as they have no prohibitions from doing so. They’d do that to support fundraising if they could. So, why don’t they? I have no doubt they don’t because they can’t. Pictures and records would show, indeed have shown, them for the liars, thieves and frauds they truly are. Too many of them have posted pictures in the past and many of us have seen the same thing Mr. Wood did, the fraud inherent in their representations which do not match up with what an experienced eye sees in the photographs. For a bit more on this story and HSUS, see here.
In these difficult economic times when people are struggling to care for their animals, it is amazing to me that governments continue to permit themselves to be egged into seizing animals that are not neglected, let alone abused, at great costs to the taxpayers. We need to be telling these governments that these are OUR dollars and we want them in our own pockets to care for our own animals and that we can do so much more effectively, efficiently, and cost effectively than they. And even if we can’t, especially if we can’t, we damned sure can’t afford to pay them to do it ineffectively, inefficiently, and at HUGE costs that go beyond dollars into the invasion of our property rights.
ALL ANIMAL OWNERS EVERYWHERE SHOULD BE CONCERNED.
And may higher powers see that animal control only shows up at my house during the hour the laundry basket is empty!