Back Yard Horse Calls

Much of the areas I really liked to work over the years were rural areas.
Because they were rural or still semi-rural areas then I responded to many, many calls about large animals and livestock.
The most common call?
It was the "back yard" horse.
You had to have at least a half an acre in many areas to have a horse. Actually, two horses could be had on half an acre. But it was most often the large enough lot, but the horse was kept in a 12 foot by 12 foot pipe corral.
OK, so it was a legal size, I always felt and said it should be a minimum of a 24 by 24 size but I couldn't make them get a bigger one if they had a legal sized corral with only one horse in it. The definition of any adequate size confinement was the ability for the animal to walk about and turn around freely in it's 'space'.

Problem was the same kind of not really ready for it as the "impulse puppy" gotten from out front of the super market, the 'we gotta get the kids a horse' was often just as bad if not sometimes worse! Spend a few hundred dollars, get a corral, just some food and water, that's all it takes right? SO wrong!
In my opinion, horses are a pretty expensive hobby! Good hay isn't cheap, an annual vet check really is needed, usually a farrier is needed to take care of the feet about every two months and that's whether you ride or not. Proper ownership of an animal like a horse in an urban area like Southern California is an expensive proposition!

And most often while the intention is good, after a while the interest would wane by the kids as they'd get older and want to do other things, but a horse can live to be mid 20's to even early 30's. But the horse was usually 'out back' and the feedings would get missed the water would start to stay dirty, and the horse would just stand there 24-7 & 365 and the poop would get higher and higher since the corral wasn't cleaned out anymore. No vet checks and it would get worms, the rear teeth get too long, the hooves continue to grow and start to look like a slipper. Between the teeth and the worms the horse doesn't want to eat and looses weight, it can't walk because its feet hurt, what a life huh?

So a friend would be visiting or a neighbor would happen to finally notice that something wasn't quite right with the horse next door and they'd call in the always 'anonymous' call of abuse or neglect.
Many of you readers may have seen shows like "Animal Cops" or similar shows on various networks, or even on-line now a days, but what owners thought was OK, or just a 'little' underweight was often pretty bad!

I am not meaning to single out any race of people, but the areas in Southern California I worked were predominately Hispanic, and many of the calls I went to where problems were existing were because many of the people I dealt with felt that "all Mexicans are born horse people" and that they inherently knew all there was to know about horses. That horse wasn't several hundred pounds underweight, it's supposed to be 'lean' because its a racehorse. Those hooves aren't too long, "I trim them myself and I know what I'm doing"!
Well, they often really didn't! Many thought they did though!
In the Muscoy area I went to several calls where the riders had been riding drunk and had an accident, either falling off or a couple of times riding drunk late at night and being hit by a car since the driver didn't see, or expect to see, a dark horse running across the road out of nowhere in the dark because the rider was drunk!

Worst abused horse call in 25 years was a literal skin and bones horse that was so weak it was suspended by ropes inside a small building. The hooves were almost curled all the way around like a slipper. We had a vet make an emergency call out to the house and as it was lowered it collapsed, and after examination the vet determined it was too far gone and could not be saved. The owning family was having money problems, thought the horse could live on scraps instead of a good diet and they just didn't have a clue about caring for it, but it had been given to them and they liked having it there because they just felt they should have a horse! What was really sad about the situation was like the joke of jacking up the flat tire on a car to change it and it doesn't look flat anymore, they'd thought the horse was OK when they'd they'd 'strung it up' because it wasn't falling down anymore.

Most in or near the city calls were about flies, horse poop build up, skinny looking, no water, dirty water, too many for the size lot, too close to 'my' house, on and on and on.
While most of us had no experience as a vet, we had the authority to make the owner pay big bucks to get the animal seen by a real vet! We'd leave a "Notice of Violation" which wasn't a citation or ticket, but it gave the owner from a few hours to as much as a month to 'fix' the problem. With just about any horse issue it meant a vet check. The people that regularly used a vet were often upset because they knew how much it was going to cost them! The ones that didn't use a vet were upset when they found out how much it was going to cost them to get the check. Long hooves meant a check by a farrier, then it was from $35 to $120 a horse depending on the farrier or area. The real high end areas like Rancho Cucamonga had some pretty costly N.O.V's issued by me. A vet check, a farrier check, looking like two to three hundred dollars per horse! And I know I wrote quite a few for two and three horses at various properties over the years i worked out in that West end of San Bernardino county.

It was sad when on a check of the area zoning that stated exactly how many and what kind of animals were allowed at a given property, and the owner had too many of this or that kind of animal. I remember one place was allowed 9 horses, the max at the time anywhere in the county, and they had 20 horses in addition to dogs, cats, goats. Had to give them 30 days to start and reduce down to the "legal limit". That would sometimes stretch out to two or even three months, only as long as the owner was 'trying'. If they weren't working on it, then they just got a ticket and let the Judge make the determination. What owners didn't know is that most Judges really couldn't go against what the area zoning was because if they did, then other citizens could just say, "well what about him?"

Most people just couldn't understand the zoning allowances. They'd say "I've lived out here, in no mans land for _____ years, I got twenty acres (or forty or even once a hundred acres) and you're telling me I can only have 9 horses, and 5 dogs?" "Yes sir, that's all you're legally able to keep". "You're full of S***!"

They didn't get that I personally didn't care what they had, but a neighbor usually, had called in complaining about too many animals, and that complaint was all it took to now make him (or her) comply!

Of course there were many more horses that were properly cared for, taken care of, ridden by caring owners and yes even some real 'horse people' are out there. During the fires in 2003 some owners spent hundreds of dollars to have their animals taken out of harms way. They couldn't get up to their homes, but they cared about their pets!
But I didn't usually meet them!
Till next time, Tad