As promised, an update on our thoughts about Chloe and where she ought to be. A number of people have contacted us about Chloe, but one, a woman, a horse lover soon to move to this area and live on a beautiful farm, seems a promising place for Chloe to be.
We are planning to meet with her shortly – she has been to our farm and seen Chloe – and talk to her, but she seems to want to give Chloe the life she deserves, with work and companionship and good care in a beautiful place. This is a process that will unfold over the next few months, there is nothing imminent about it. It just feels good in its very preliminary stages, and as always, I wish to be open about it.
Maria loves Chloe but worries she is too busy to give her the work and attention a working animal like a Haflinger-Welsh pony wants and needs. This is a personal decision for her, but I support it. I have written often about my belief that working animals need to work, that is what love means to them and for them.
People with pets write me often to say love is more important than work, but any border collie owner or anyone who lives and works with working animals knows that work is love for them. It is not abuse for carriage horses to pull carriages in Central Park, it is not abuse for most domesticated Asian elephants to entertain people and work in circuses, it is not abuse for ponies to work and give rides to children, it is not abuse for border collies to herd sheep or police or search and rescue and bomb-sniffing dogs to work to save and help people.
All of these animals have been bred for centuries to work with people, to entertain and uplift us, to support humans in many other ways, from therapy to farming. It is a sad thing when the idea of animals lifting the spirits of people and showing them how animals and humans can do amazing things together is seen as cruel and is banned in the name of loving animals. There is nothing loving or knowing about it.
We love to take animals away from people, we take little responsibility for what happens to almost all of them we remove them from human contact. They die, they have no purpose. They go to slaughter. Or they languish and deteriorate, without the physical and mental stimulation that comes from the work they are bred to do. Working animals without work suffer greatly, they become disconnected and disoriented, often aggressive and listless. Their muscles deteriorate, so does their spirit.
If you have ever known an elephant trainer in a good circus, you may know the extraordinary bond they have achieved with their elephants, you may have witnessed the cruelty and suffering that afflicts both human and elephant when they are separated. This is no more humane than ripping a champion show or agility or working dog away from the people who love and train them. It is simply abuse in another form.
This idea that animals must be removed from work and people is selfish, not selfless. We need a new and wiser understanding of animals than this if they are to remain on the earth.
Maria loves Chloe very deeply, that is precisely why she is open to the idea of a new home for her, a place where she can be challenged and stimulated and continue to help people learn to ride. If she didn’t care about her, she’d simply languish on our farm, as so many horses do on so many farms.
Trainers and vets will tell you, if asked, that the saddest thing they see are horses with nothing to do, no work or stimulation, their lives are primarily about eating hay and dropping manure.
Chloe’s life is better than that, and she will always have a home here. If there is a better one, we will be sad to see her go, but will gladly help her get to it, and be grateful for the chance. I know that conflicts with the philosophies of people who seem animals primarily in terms of emotion, and human ideas about family.
We love and celebrate and defend the idea of working animals here, the cruelest thing we can do to Fate and Red is deny them the opportunity to work. Love and work do not conflict with one another when it comes to the lives of working animals, they are very much the same thing.
In the meantime, we are happy to have Chloe here, and appreciate her very much.