Pick Up The Pace

During my time spent with my family socialising with the horse owners as I grew up, I questioned many things, the biggest question? Where do they all go? That’s the ponies that I watched for hours, on end. The innocent dished faces and blatant blazed faces, curious approaches and playful leaps.
I got to find out, we went to a sale, the horse mart, where I watched with horror the gloopy stick of glue, slap intently down on the rumps of the yearlings, the disked number hurriedly positioned, the glue oozing out beneath. The smell of fear and nostrils turned inside out, the smell of fear, stomach churning. The bidding starts as the yearlings are scuppering about the ring, old men with flat caps bashing their walking sticks on the rails, ponies falling over with fear and gearing grunts from the crowd. This was how horse people acted. I did not like it, not one bit. Then the dreaded moment that the hammer went down. SOLD. To the man next to us. I asked my dad who he was and what was he going to do to with so many ponies. He is a meat man I was told.
My reaction was instantaneous I clung onto him with fury kicking and thumping until I was dragged off to the car. I was not allowed to go the mart again. Well not until I was old enough to drive myself. Almost twenty years on when I had the courage to see if things had changed. They had not, but then what did I expect, the same meat man was there, the fear and gearing and scuppering. The only difference was the calibre of horses that the meat man was taking. Bigger, fatter, coloured, riding horses, Shetlands and not forgetting the yearlings from our commons and marshes.
Where is the evolution? Is it with the meat man, whom gets more for his money? Where are the raised standards for the horses? There is legislation in place, but nobody to police or enforce it. No resources to cover the costs. So it continues, inside and outside the sales ring.
What bothers me the most is that the sales rings are not only full of the feral ponies. But the ponies bred by proud stud farm owners. Who watch as their prized time consuming young stock goes to the meat man. The children’s ponies whom misbehaved or got grown out of and cannot find homes. The race horses, winners and losers. Hunters and show jumpers. Who once gave so much pleasure in the winners enclosure now destined for the table?
Just another part of our throwaway society? Evolution needs to pick up the pace and realisation needs to set in.