I am supposed to be online surfing trade me for summer horse covers but I am mad so I came here instead.

I am mad because I don't want to spend money on a horse cover our horse does not need and, well probably mostly, I resent being made to do so by some idiot who is contemporaneously wielding power and ignorance and has our pony club and all its members backed into a corner.



You see our horse, Trogdor (that is Trogdor the Burninator or Troggy for short - thats him above), does not need a summer cover. He is a well covered, thick skinned, healthy horse with a coat in good condition meaning he naturally has everything he needs that horses for centuries have used to stay cool in summer and warm in winter - and besides he lives in Auckland where it just doesn't get cold (well compared to Dunedin where we recently vacated - I would have to daily break the ice on my horse's water trough through winter down there!) and add to this is he is an Arab cross bred - gee I wonder how the horses in Arabia survived all that desert... so he only gets covered when it is the middle of winter and it is wet and frosty and even then mostly because we are sooks.

This is best practice equine care.

I could bore you stupid linking to endless sites advocating "the natural horse" approach to equine care but basically the gist is that if a horse is in good health and is not too old or too young then they coat will aerate or sit flat to let heat in or out depending on the conditions and only in extreme conditions do you intervene with nature - most of the time if you spend mega bucks building your horse a shelter he or she can stand under you will find him happily out in the blinding rain (or snow as in Dunedin) or sweltering sun ignoring your shelter in much the same manner he is ignoring the weather.

Enter the stupid, moronic animal activist.

He has decided that all the pony club horses are being neglected because they don't have/won't stay under "adequate shelter". He will report us to the council for animal abuse if we do not immediately ensure our horses have cover from the sun and have pony club shut down. (Did I mention the pony club occupies several acres of prime waterfront Auckland real estate which seriously GRATES the council?)

As the horses will not stay in the shade and move around the paddock as they graze (anyone would think they were coping perfectly fine with the sun) our only option to prevent the wrath of the council and to get this idiot of our backs is to put covers on them. This will make the horses hot, sweaty and miserable and will cost us money and will increase the risk of the horses coming to harm in the paddock by way of cover strap breakage or getting themselves hooked on fences and trees, etc. But hey, what would the two vets who wrote opinions on our behalf and us experienced horse owners know compared to some jumped up idiotic animal rights activist?

He actually rejected the vets opinion on the grounds that he "did not consider one of them to be credible." When asked which vet was not credible his response was, "I don't want to name him because I don't want to risk being sued for slander." Hello! You are only at risk of slander if you are talking crap, if it is true you have a defence.

So here I am looking at forking out at least $30 (for the crappiest option on the market - yeah I know, its not that much but its the principle!) for an item I don't need that will make my horse uncomfortable because of some nut-job who knows he has us all over a barrel because he knows the council will leap at the chance to get us off the land we lease from them but still dares to call himself the advocate for animal rights.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Madeleine