Ok at this point we're one for one and counting. I check one of the 15 web boards I go to and lo and behold, I have an anon post. (Whoopeeee!)
We e-mail back and forth and finally, we are making headway. I'm not sure weather it's my disclosure of living in NY or that we might have been related. But I get this phone number, and he said to call in the next 25 minutes and that his wife would need to drive him to town soon.
We get to talking, and we realize that he knows my Grand Parents in Maine. He thinks he knew My Dad, and when he said he was an opinionated cuss that you can't tell much. Regretfully, I admit he might just KNOW my dad after all!
We talked all of that 20 some odd minutes, and my calling card was wasted. I promised to call him tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Monday, October 10, 2005
Wow! A new way to rant and share pictures. I'm Havin IT!
Hey looky here! I found a way to create a web board entity, and it's 2 way...Yea!~
First of all let me give you some history.
I am now 48 years old and when I joined the big wide Internet, it was a welcome place and people were fairly honest and decent..Some still are. There are all kinds of need full people and animals out there and I latched on to one and held a death grip. I started out locally, and found there were much competition and oh so much back biting.. For goodness sakes they were all just auction horses! Most skinny and un-handled.. Too many people doing things the way they think it should be done instead of thinking about how it would better serve the horse... I knew there had to be a better way. This was way too one sided, and just wrong.
Upon the winter of 1996, I was donating my time to a group of people with lofty dreams about transporting horses to better homes, if there was someone waiting to love and care about it. Great! Right? Well it has been said that the road to Hell has been paved by good intentions, and this is just one of those occasions that I'd say that I believed it. There were a lot of people helping one another to gain livestock. Not all of them had the right housing or general know how. I know the hearts were in the right places. But the needs of the horses were not even fathomed.
Upon a winter storm of January 1997, the head of this Transportation group that was mostly not- for- profit organization. Decided that we needed to look into a matter that came into her email. What in essence happened, is that a horse e-group sent her an alarm about some horses that were in Canada and there supposed to be freezing to death? She asked me to help her research this. I did have a contact that I nurtured from a horse chat group. Her name is not published but she was an Animal Constable and hubby worked for the Canadian Mounted Police and the division that deals with cruelty issues large spectrum.
The woman I will call Cathy, did some research for me and the area she thought was in question was in Western Alberta, and the horses were not freezing to death since the ice storm passed, She related that a lot of open range animals die.
Most Pmu’s (At this time I had no idea what one was.. but I was researching right?) Are housed in barns. The yearling foals that are not yet old enough to breed yet are released to the ranges. They get fed, and the ranchers send out water..No profits can be made from dead animals. Right?
She went on to educate me on the processes, and I kind of kept it to myself about the foals each year. She explained a lot about the history, and I can understand why the industry does this. I continued to find info and asked he that if I had someone willing to come up and get some of those foal-sickles, could she get the Founder this info. Reluctantly, she did and arranged for Missy Moen to come up, and at this point I was cut out from the loop. And I awaited emails for the coming 3 weeks.
Those emails did not happen. I did however; get a rather testy call from my contact (Cathy). Oh my god! Why did I let you send this woman? Did you, or did you not, tell me she was a decent human being? Oh Donna! This woman is coming up here shouting and calling names. You should see this. She has not a clue! Please don’t ever ask this of me again. This woman is a lunatic!
I think I ate about a pound of humble pie, and apologized up one continent and down the other. This was no way to help anyone..
At least, Cathy told her all that it would take to get these babies
Home once she paid 300 apiece. Cathy was nice enough to tell her about all the taxes and fee’s and what is now known as a broker fee of about $200 After all the vet work was done.
Once she completed the math and they sent her down the road where she promptly spent the next week getting lost with a horse trailer in tow. She ended up NOT Getting those babies but leaving a trail of pissed off people in her wake.
What did I learn from this? Hum! Could be you get more learning Done with your mouth closed and your hand out, than you do with sword unsheathed. I hit the chat rooms, the web sites and this is where the blog history starts another chapter..Tomorrow
At this point I hit the web boards and talk to anyone that would give me leads, I get a lot of dead ended streets and a few with water leads. But, leads are leads; right? At this pont, I'm spending about 20 minutes a call minimum. Some calls end as soon as they know I was American and a woman and they were'nt going to make 10 foalsget sold this call. I finally get one gal whose brother worked at a PMU barn who actually wanted to talk! OHMYGOD...He's actually polite and decent and he's really interested in what my "angle is" What is in it for me, who's going to come down and get 5 or more babies? Did I have hard answers at this point..No. I told him how I got involved, and I wanted more truth than I was seeing on the internet. I know there had to be more info. Peta could not be right on this 100% People establish bonds with animals, even the cave man did!
First of all let me give you some history.
I am now 48 years old and when I joined the big wide Internet, it was a welcome place and people were fairly honest and decent..Some still are. There are all kinds of need full people and animals out there and I latched on to one and held a death grip. I started out locally, and found there were much competition and oh so much back biting.. For goodness sakes they were all just auction horses! Most skinny and un-handled.. Too many people doing things the way they think it should be done instead of thinking about how it would better serve the horse... I knew there had to be a better way. This was way too one sided, and just wrong.
Upon the winter of 1996, I was donating my time to a group of people with lofty dreams about transporting horses to better homes, if there was someone waiting to love and care about it. Great! Right? Well it has been said that the road to Hell has been paved by good intentions, and this is just one of those occasions that I'd say that I believed it. There were a lot of people helping one another to gain livestock. Not all of them had the right housing or general know how. I know the hearts were in the right places. But the needs of the horses were not even fathomed.
Upon a winter storm of January 1997, the head of this Transportation group that was mostly not- for- profit organization. Decided that we needed to look into a matter that came into her email. What in essence happened, is that a horse e-group sent her an alarm about some horses that were in Canada and there supposed to be freezing to death? She asked me to help her research this. I did have a contact that I nurtured from a horse chat group. Her name is not published but she was an Animal Constable and hubby worked for the Canadian Mounted Police and the division that deals with cruelty issues large spectrum.
The woman I will call Cathy, did some research for me and the area she thought was in question was in Western Alberta, and the horses were not freezing to death since the ice storm passed, She related that a lot of open range animals die.
Most Pmu’s (At this time I had no idea what one was.. but I was researching right?) Are housed in barns. The yearling foals that are not yet old enough to breed yet are released to the ranges. They get fed, and the ranchers send out water..No profits can be made from dead animals. Right?
She went on to educate me on the processes, and I kind of kept it to myself about the foals each year. She explained a lot about the history, and I can understand why the industry does this. I continued to find info and asked he that if I had someone willing to come up and get some of those foal-sickles, could she get the Founder this info. Reluctantly, she did and arranged for Missy Moen to come up, and at this point I was cut out from the loop. And I awaited emails for the coming 3 weeks.
Those emails did not happen. I did however; get a rather testy call from my contact (Cathy). Oh my god! Why did I let you send this woman? Did you, or did you not, tell me she was a decent human being? Oh Donna! This woman is coming up here shouting and calling names. You should see this. She has not a clue! Please don’t ever ask this of me again. This woman is a lunatic!
I think I ate about a pound of humble pie, and apologized up one continent and down the other. This was no way to help anyone..
At least, Cathy told her all that it would take to get these babies
Home once she paid 300 apiece. Cathy was nice enough to tell her about all the taxes and fee’s and what is now known as a broker fee of about $200 After all the vet work was done.
Once she completed the math and they sent her down the road where she promptly spent the next week getting lost with a horse trailer in tow. She ended up NOT Getting those babies but leaving a trail of pissed off people in her wake.
What did I learn from this? Hum! Could be you get more learning Done with your mouth closed and your hand out, than you do with sword unsheathed. I hit the chat rooms, the web sites and this is where the blog history starts another chapter..Tomorrow
At this point I hit the web boards and talk to anyone that would give me leads, I get a lot of dead ended streets and a few with water leads. But, leads are leads; right? At this pont, I'm spending about 20 minutes a call minimum. Some calls end as soon as they know I was American and a woman and they were'nt going to make 10 foalsget sold this call. I finally get one gal whose brother worked at a PMU barn who actually wanted to talk! OHMYGOD...He's actually polite and decent and he's really interested in what my "angle is" What is in it for me, who's going to come down and get 5 or more babies? Did I have hard answers at this point..No. I told him how I got involved, and I wanted more truth than I was seeing on the internet. I know there had to be more info. Peta could not be right on this 100% People establish bonds with animals, even the cave man did!
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