All right, I'm asking - who else is going to do this?

NorCal Equine Rescue held their euthanasia clinic yesterday. Here is a report.

The goal was to provide low cost euthanasia for horses who were appropriate for euthanasia (i.e. had health conditions warranting it) and whose owners simply did not have the resources to make it happen. As I observed before, I think this was a great idea. I want to see horses like these have a calm, drugged-out passing and not experience a double decker ride or years of suffering with a painful condition.

So now I'm going to ask: If you have a rescue, are you going to do something like this? Are you doing it already? If you've done it already, how has it worked?

If I had a formal rescue and were going to offer it, I'd do like Los Angeles Animal Control does and request proof of low income. They offer free spay/neuter if your income is under $40,000 and I think that's a pretty fair guideline for this, too. If you make less than that, the $500 or so for euth/disposal is probably a pretty good whack to your monthly income and while I know we would all like to argue that people who can't afford euth/disposal shouldn't necessarily have horses in the first place, the reality is that they do and we'd better deal with it. There are plenty of horses out there in hideous condition and they're not all able to be rehabbed.

People scream that slaughter is needed because they simply don't know what we will do with horses like the ones NorCal put to sleep. The crippled ones, the ones suffering from some chronic condition, the ones that are very old and have no one willing to care for them. Yes, it would be nice if everybody was like the people on this blog who have told their tales of putting a much loved family horse to sleep and never mentioning the expense, but we can't snap our fingers and make everybody like that. (As was mentioned in the comments yesterday about the whole topic of more humane farming - for many people, cost is the ONLY factor, and you cannot change that mindset completely.) If we are going to be anti-slaughter - and you all know that I am - we must provide a viable alternative and I applaud NorCal for doing that.

So who's next?