Horse Adoption

The comments on my last post about the theft of our pictures and the theft of the word Rescue, brought up another good point. That is the overuse and misuse of the word Adoption. Adoption is a "feel good" word and it should be, if you are adopting a child, but the adoption of animals is just plain silly.

If your adopted dog viciously attacks someone or some other animal, you will soon learn that you actually OWN that dog, he is yours and nobody else's, he belongs to you. Whether you bought him or adopted him it makes no difference.

Do words really have that much power? We no longer buy animals, we adopt them. We no longer sell animals, we re-home them. The money is the same whether you buy, sell, re-home or adopt. The only thing that is different is the terminology.

Using this thought, I will now reword and try to explain my previous post to you again.

There is a young woman in Texas who is a Novice. She was a minor but is now an adult. She supports herself in a career of extracting goods, services and donations from the trusting individuals who she comes in contact with.

She uses a free website provider to highlight the horses that she has never seen, in order to obtain donations to feed and care for horses that she does not own.

If you have come in contact with this woman, who's name is something like Cortney, and made donations to her horse rescue, then you can feel good about the fact that you have provided resources for the care and feeding of her imaginary animals.

If your plans to adopt one of them fell though. I am sure that she just decided that you were not a good match and could not provide a good home for them. However, your money will not be refunded because of the time and effort that she put into making that decision.

Please be warned, there are many people out there on the internet who will scam and otherwise defraud you, more than you can even imagine. Make sure that you are dealing with an established business when adopting any animal because the words "adoption" and "rescue" are terms that many unscrupulous people are using in order to sell their animals and make more money than they could by using the term "for sale".

**Update: Her website has finally been removed, she must have found a new way to scam people or is hopefully in jail.**

Fake Horse Rescue

We received a phone call letting us know that one of our riding horses is for sale on a rescue website in Texas. The owner of the "rescue" and website posts pictures of other people's horses along with the horse's actual information including price. She doesn't even bother to change their registered names. She takes deposits on horses that she doesn't have or own.

Our horse is for sale on our own website, she lifted his pictures and information to put on her site. The horse's name is Chips Ahoy Leroy and he has never been outside southern Indiana. The lady who called to inform us had the same thing happen to her and one of her horses.

This thief has bought horses from elderly people who could no longer care for them with a promise to pay which she never does. She has even sold shipped semen from her stallion advertising it as from some champion stallion or stallion with great bloodlines. No one catches on until it is time to register the foal then they find out that the DNA does not match the stallion that is named.

She has been reported to the local authorities, the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission and her web host, but no one has done anything with her. So the lady who called us just keeps an eye on her site and reports her activities to the people who's horses and pictures she uses.

This young lady also offers training and boarding using other people's pictures. I talked to a local detective and he laughed saying that she is going to be quite the gangster, but he did give me some tips on who to report her to. The good news is that her website is at one of those free website places and it doesn't show up in search engines.

So here is a word to the wise; Watermark your photos with your name or website name.

Here are some other tips; Don't buy horses or semen from just any website. Google the horse's name and make sure that the seller is an established ranch, breeder or rescue. Don't assume that just because the word "rescue" is used that it is really a rescue.

It has become quite stylish to call yourself a rescue and that is the reason some crooks are using the word as a sale's tactic for their horses, dogs and cats. I suppose we could call ourselves a rescue, as we have rescued several horses throughout the years and refuse to sell our horses at low prices or at auction.

We certainly could save ourselves some huge feed bills if we just sold them to stop the financial bleeding like most people are doing. But they are our responsibility and we will take care of them as long as we are able.

Tomatoes

I was so excited last night! I was really late putting out my tomatoes this year and while everyone else was already reaping their harvest, I just had plants with tons of green tomatoes on them. I got my first ripe tomato last night and I gently carried it to the house, washed it off and grabbed the salt shaker.

My tomatoes are always better than anyone else's for some reason. They are very acidic and will make you get blisters in your mouth if you eat too many. Our neighbor has been giving us some tomatoes over the last few weeks and they are slightly sweet and do not have good tomato flavor. I think that he waters them too much.

My neighbor kept asking me if I had tomatoes yet and smirked about how many he was getting from his plants. I told him that was fine but I would still have ripe tomatoes for Christmas.

I really do have ripe tomatoes for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I just cover my plants for the first few light frosts and then pick all of the green tomatoes off of my plants before the first hard freeze. Then I put the green tomatoes in a cardboard box and cover them with newspapers.

My neighbor will have already cut down his non-producing plants while we have plants loaded with tomatoes. This happens every year because he gets his plants out just as early as possible and I am lazy and procrastinate.

August Already?

Where did the summer go? Where did the year go?? I can't believe that I have only blogged one time this month. I can't believe that it is already the 14th of August. Christmas is just around the corner. I am trying not to panic...

If you are young, enjoy your youth while you still have time because as you get older the faster time goes by. I was young once and it wasn't that long ago. Days used to have so much time in them. Weeks took forever to go by. A month was nearly an eternity. Not anymore, years are more like weeks used to be.

This summer has just flown by. School has already started or is getting ready to start. I have been spending some quality time with the Grandchildren and they are about to kill me. Seriously, swimming with Grandkids can be hazardous to your health when you are an old Granny. I am so sore tonight as I type this that I can barely move my head and the calf of my left leg is swollen and tender from horrible leg cramps.

The problem is when your oldest Grandson says that you can't dunk him, well, then you just have to prove to him that you are still in control and he isn't as big and tough as he thinks he is at 10 years old. He is big enough and tough enough for me to lean on while trying to walk to the house after I had dunked him several times and my leg cramped up when I tried to go up the ladder to get out of the pool.

I got the pool because I wanted my Grandkids to learn to swim, which is something that I never got to do when I was a kid. They are all doing pretty well, the oldest can swim like a fish and the next to the oldest is diving and swimming with her face under the water with water wings on.

The others still have a ways to go but the trick is to keep them in the water as much as possible. Our two year old Granddaughter is just sure that she can swim. She has no fear and tries to break free of your grasp. Her Mother, Papaw and I just do not have the courage to let her try it.

Horses Killed For Meat?

Horses being killed in South Florida for their meat? - CNN.com

If you haven't been following the above story online, it is terribly frightening. I don't think that it is getting much coverage. I have asked several horse people that I know and they haven't even heard about it. They are saying 19 horses have been slaughtered but they think that many more have been killed. Some people are just not reporting it because they don't want to be involved with the police or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The articles are saying that horse meat is bringing $7 to $20 per pound on the black market and possibly even $40 per pound. The strange part of this story is that they aren't stealing the horses but are butchering them right in their own pastures or in their stalls. I read in another article where a lady went out to feed her horses and found nothing but the horse's carcass in the stall. How shocking would that be?

It is not illegal to kill and process your own horses for meat in Florida. So with horses selling at auction for $10 to $250 each or being offered for free, why would someone risk jail time to do this? They are also risking being shot by the horse owners. With all of the unwanted horses out there, it is a real shame that good, well loved horses are being slaughtered.