When you tell people you do horses there are three main reactions:
“Oh really, that is so sweet” Which really means: Here we go again, she is one of those pony patting vegetarians with horse posters on the wall who smells of farmyard animals.
or
“Oh really, that is so nice” Which really means: So you haven’t got a life then but how nice for you to have a hobby like that. Right where did that one with the big tits go?
or
“Oh, cool, do you have one of those leather whips then?” Which really means …. well actually I don’t know as after I have replied “of course I have, and I am not afraid to use it” it is normally time to move on or I fear I might get involved in something I would rather not.
But some of us don’t come into the first two categories; actually none of my horsey friends do, because I hate that crap as much as everyone else. And as for the third I can only speak for myself when I say that I have never really taken to that sort of thing.
A friend of mine was well impressed to learn that at the yard I used to work we had a big staff barbeque with one of our four legged friends on the menu - if you see what I mean. The fact that the horse in question –or in a rather nice marinade as it happened- had belonged to the owner of the yard and upon its death was cut to pieces by a member of staff and a livery owner around the back of the stables, only added to the value of the story. But he found that as he told this story to his other friends -they just didn’t believe him. The image of a group of horsey people sitting on a terrace enjoying horse steak on a summer evening after finishing a day at the stables just didn’t ring true. It was bloody good meat though.
But a lot more shocking than horses being part of the food chain is some people’s spaced out relationship with their pets. The mare was spending a few months on grass at a yard up in the valley with some other horses this summer. One evening when I came to ride I went down to get her and found a dead horse lying in a pile of blood at the bottom of the slope. Its hind leg was pointing out in a rather unusual angel and it turned out it had slipped and broken it rather badly so they had had to shoot it. Sad but I suppose it happens, and frankly it was a skanky old trotter anyway. But the owners were of course devastated, they had owned it for nearly two decades and despite the questionable quality of it, I suppose you get attached to them.
But after all the teenage girls at the yard had cried and cried some more and the horse was trotting happily around in horsey heaven or something, it was the practical aspect of getting rid of the damn thing. It turned out there was only one guy picking up dead horses and he only drove past Oslo once a week. But through pulling some strings it was organised to have it picked up the next day and taken to the glue factory, as it was not ideal to have a carcass that size lying in the middle of the field in the sun for very long.
The only problem was that by then the owners had decided they would really like to cremate their much loved pet, instead of just sending it to the glue factory. As for what would possess you to think it’s a good idea to cremate a whole horse I don’t know, but they insisted on this –until they were presented with the costs. £ 4000. This must have struck them as overly costly for old horsey’s funeral so they opted for a cheaper way to lay it to rest. They asked the local vet if he could cut the head off for them so they could just cremate that.
The vet is a very sober-minded man who I have never even seen raise his voice at anyone, but when presented with this, he actually flipped. After telling them just what he thought about the idea he finished off by telling them to give the money they obviously were so desperate to part with to the children in Africa or something because the head would stay on.
In the end horsey was driven to the animal hospital downtown where the head was cut off and the heart cut out, before the rest was sent on to the glue factory. They then paid to have the heart and head cremated and put in a nice shiny urn.
Now, despite my weakness for a good barbeque, at the end of the day I probably wouldn’t want to eat my own horse. But I sure would not want it on the mantelpiece either.
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