There is nothing so good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse. ~John Lubbock, “Recreation,” The Use of Life, 1894
Look what my husband got me for Valentine’s Day! When my husband showed the picture of the mini horse to a friend at work he said, “I thought your wife wanted a quarter-horse not one quarter of a horse.” (I actually have my eye on an aged standard-bred but no matter).
Anyway in order to adopt a horse most organizations tell you that you need to have at least one other equine on the property as a companion. My husband sort of liked the idea of getting a donkey, but as I scrolled through Craigslist this little guy caught my attention and so I sent the picture to my husband — just to point out how cute he was.
My husband texted me back: You want him for Valentine’s Day?
He also told me later that to himself he said: we have to have him.
So Saturday morning the wonderful couple who had saved him from the kill pen delivered him to our house!
It is estimated that over 100,000 horses are shipped for slaughter every year to Mexico and Canada.
Some people think rescuing from kill pens does nothing to solve the problem of over-breeding and seeing horses as just a commodity, but, for the individual horses rescued, it makes a difference.
As so often happens when dealing with people from Upstate New York, I came away inspired. For no material gain this couple takes in animals and finds them new homes. Not only that but in this case they had an entire care package of grooming supplies, special feed and even a beautiful winter coat for the little guy my husband renamed Hobbit or Hobbes for short.
The generosity of some people just astounds me.
I spent all day yesterday with my first horse, just reading Tom Jones and allowing him to get used to me since he’s a little timid. At one point I could tell he was already pretty comfortable with his surroundings. There he stood, basking in the winter sun while the sheep sleepily chewed their cud. His eyelids kept drooping until he finally napped with the rest of the barnyard animals.
Author Adrienne Morris 
14 responses to “Sunday at Middlemay Farm”
Wonderful! What’s his name? He’s magnificent!
Neighbors of ours have two mini horses, and the one that looks a lot like yours we call “Fabio” because of his long blond mane.
Congrats!
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My husband and Hobbes really seem to be hitting it off which is funny because I’m the driving force on this one. Maybe he’ll be good therapy for my over worked husband. LOL.
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This warms my heart like you wouldn’t believe! I love that you have a husband that is that thoughtful. I can’t think of a better Valentine’s Day present. And it really saddens me that so many horses are sent to the kill pen. Why? Why can’t they live out their life in the pasture and a barn?
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I think the big problem is that most people aren’t connected to other people. If breeders slowed down the breeding a bit and people knew there were horses available for adoption then maybe the numbers would go down. The thing is that horses are seen as a commodity and people do eat them in other countries, but a lot of these poor creatures were once beloved family pets… I haven’t been a perfect steward of creation — by a long shot — but in this one case i hope I can really do right by Hobbes.
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Hobbit is beautiful. Animal rescue organizations, located all over the country, tend to be managed by people with huge hearts. I’m not surprised that you and your family took in this lovely horse.
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It’s funny to have a horse so small. He’s skittish but I intend to change that. lol
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Sorry I missed the name. Hobbes the Horsey! Love it.
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Oh, what a sweet lil guy. Thank you two for rescuing him!
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Well really it’s our pleasure and gain! 🙂
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So exciting!
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And then there is the British Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) that does everything but that which is in its title and job description. There is a national magazine in the UK named the Spectator. A somewhat zany journo living in south London keeps her horses in the Surrey commuter belt, about 20 miles from town…
This was the story of her neighbours and their treatment by this charity (Spectator 9 Feb 2019)
Can I get you a cup of tea?’ asked the lady as she sat beside me in the caravan. The old farmer, a horse dealer, sat on another seat looking stunned.
‘You look exhausted,’ she said. I was. I’d driven hundreds of miles looking for horses I had seen seized from the horse dealer’s farm. But I didn’t want to worry her by telling her where I thought I had found them.
I had set off in pursuit of a fleet of lorries marked with the address of a Yorkshire company, after 123 horses were seized by the RSPCA and the police in a joint operation with Trading Standards, from Hurst Farm, just down the road from my house in Surrey. Although the place was always a mess, I felt uneasy. Having driven by every day and always seen the horses eating from plentiful bales of haylage in winter, or grazing 100 acres of grass in summer, I was doubtful that these horses needed rescuing.
The RSPCA told local people not to worry about the horses — they were going to nearby shelters. But the lorries had come down from Yorkshire, so the journey had to be a long one or it didn’t make any sense.
My bitter experience of investigating past horse seizures made me get in my car and set out to find them. I drove and drove, until finally I think I found some of the horses in a barn on a farm, somewhere remote.
As I was looking, independent vets charged with visiting seized horses were engaged in an 800-mile round trip to view them all and verify their condition. They found that they had been transported almost to the four corners of the country, from south to north, Wales to East Anglia.
Meanwhile, the RSPCA admitted publicly that seven horses had already been PTS (put to sleep) — two on site during the raid, and five more in RSPCA care. They insisted this was on the advice of vets.
For some time now I’ve been looking into RSPCA horse seizures. Through my various investigations I have built my own contacts with animal welfare staff who’ve been able to help me with this case. And from documents they’ve shown me, I could see that some foals had been judged to be in ‘poor body condition’ because they did not have enough muscle. Young horses don’t grow muscle until after they grow bone. There was also paperwork showing that the horses had been judged very poorly because of red worm, which ought to be treatable.
Some of the photographs I saw of young horses were supposedly of the ‘poorest’ ones. All I can say is that if the RSPCA puts them down, I am going to be heartbroken, because they look to me to be in a perfectly reasonable condition for winter: furry and roughed up by weather, but by no means at death’s door.
‘You mean you’ve been looking for them?’ said the lady. I nodded. ‘Where are they?’ she said, both her face and his suddenly lit up. I nearly burst into tears.
No charges have been brought, and the investigation is said to be ongoing — in consequence of which the RSPCA refused to answer the detailed questions I put to them about the case.
But while the farmer is refusing to sign his horses over to the ownership of the RSPCA, he is being charged £13.50 a day per horse, and that’s £1,660 a day for the herd — which he has been warned will be between £750,000 to £1 million by the time of any trial. The RSPCA say this is the cost of the horses’ livery. But the word livery is sometimes to be used loosely.
What I found while looking for horses in unofficial holding centres used by the RSPCA were windswept, bleak fields where horses in past seizures have stood up to their knees in mud.
I came home exhausted, with a dose of food poisoning and full of the same hopelessness that nearly did for me the last time I tried to investigate the RSPCA.
The truth of Britain’s animal rescuing industry is unutterably awful. When you start looking into where all these seized animals go, you begin to question everything you think you know.
It was on return from my travels that I went to see the horse dealer. What he and his lady companion told me about what happened was this: it was a dawn raid; they were detained in the caravan while the farm was searched and all the dogs and horses seized; two sick horses recuperating on straw beds in the barn were put down as they lay there. As the farmer talked, I realised that he wasn’t quite looking at me.
One of the main complaints about his farm, leading to calls over the years by locals to the RSPCA, was that the haylage bales were messily arranged with the wrappers not taken off properly so the plastic lay on the ground. Several broken hay holders were not disposed of either, and lay wonkily in a ditch.
The old boy told me of his daily routine, taking four to five round bales each morning out to the herd, at a cost of many hundreds of pounds a week. His hay supplier confirmed this. He also had hard feed piled up and a bill as long as your arm from the local feed merchants.
He made several embarrassed comments about the mess before I said: ‘Have you told your lawyer you are partially sighted?’
He looked downcast. ‘Not really,’ he said hesitantly. Even though the horses had plentiful hay, he couldn’t see properly to clear up, is my guess.
It is the same with almost every case. Once you scratch the surface of animal conditions, the human condition behind them is revealed. As I made my way home, I kept asking myself: how is this allowed to happen in a nice Surrey village? Actually, I think it happens especially easily in a nice village, where a lot of people these days hate mud and messy fields full of gypsy cobs.
As the countryside disappears, it makes way for chocolate-box villages with cafés and manicured greens. NO HORSE RIDING says the sign on our green. Few local residents want to look at the reality of farming or livestock.
There are, though, plenty of people who know nothing about animals who will call in and report muddy horses in winter. And that is all you need if you want to get public support to raid a messy old horse dealership standing on land worth millions.
The RSPCA gave an interview about Hurst Farm saying that the raid showed they faced a winter horse crisis. I suppose that might boost donations from concerned supporters. And they will hope to recoup six–figure costs, if that is what they say they have run up, if and when the farmer is put on trial.
By that time a new housing development may be emerging around those muddy fields. Plans had been lodged a day before the raid at Guildford Borough Council for six luxury homes, to be built at the front of the land, exactly where the horses had been eating their hay. A spokeswoman for the RSPCA said the charity had no idea when it carried out the raid that plans for a housing estate were being put in.
‘These animals came into our care because vets had welfare concerns for them,’ she said. ‘Very sadly, five of the horses at independent equine veterinary hospitals, or being cared for by our partner charities, have since been put to sleep. These decisions were not taken lightly and were on the advice of vets for medical reasons.’
For those who devoutly believe in the RSPCA — and there are many — the ultimate proof of their good intentions will be to see the remainder of the rescued horses in better conditions than they were in before.
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Yes, this is a problem over here too within the human foster care system (“industry” some say). When we took in our now adopted daughter the agency was ready to throw her in a mental institution for life. She was highly traumatized by an extremely abusive mother (well-documented) so she acted crazy. They drugged her up and sent her to a therapeutic group home where underpaid and incompetent staff workers basically babysat wild children acting like something out of Lord of the Flies. I saw so many kids without advocates fall through the system.
I’ve also seen that the troubled kids come from suffering adults–long histories of incest, neglect, poverty etc. Yet the kids coming into care with sexual trauma and broken bones can’t stay with parents who refuse to get help. But then there are people in the system who prey on kids too. Human depravity for sure! We were witness to people who wanted to keep as many kids in group homes as possible because they made tons of money off of it.
Back to animals. it is true that people can be dumb. One woman got her dog taken away because neighbors saw that he was out in the cold most days — he was a livestock guardian dog made for extreme weather and the outdoors! he also acted as a service animal for the lady who was visually impaired.
Here in the states there are people who stand to make money off horse meat too. And people over breed and then have too many horses to care for even with good intentions. Yet a woman around the corner from me has a crappy house and very basic fencing and shelter for her horses but they are well taken care of and healthy. Complex as always.
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I take all the points about the way that institutions treat damaged people. Same here…
The worst story I ever had personal knowledge of regarding the RSPCA charity went like this. Oh, but firstly you should know that badgers are our sacred animal, like Pharonic cats or Hindu Cows. There is even an Act of Parliament protecting this ever-breeding, nowadays urban, menace while at the same time in parts of the country badgers are systematically culled by the government (as bovine TB carriers). I was attempting to buy a house from two surviving sisters after the third one died. Looking at the garden, I noticed a piece of cardboard blocking a hole in the hedge dividing the house from its neighbours. I asked and the two women nearly burst into tears and begged me not to ‘mention it to anyone’ It seems that while the other sister was alive she had a knock on the door from a uniformed RSPCA ‘inspector’ and wait for it, he was accompanied by a policemen! Her crime? Trying to divert the badger from his nocturnal rambles. She was told that she could go to jail under the Badgers Act 1991 unless she removed the barrier.
The society began in the very early part of the 19th century, applying the principles those same founders were applying to the anti-slavery movement which they also began. Nowadays it has been hijacked by high paid careerists with political agendas.
Your horse is adorable by the way!
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How cute that little fellow is! (I can’t get over the 100,000 killed every year! Why? What for?)
Hope all is well, Adrienne. And that Spring will soon come your way.
Brian
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