They Put Barbaro Down Today

Yes it is sad for the horse. But on the bright side he might be recycled and fill some poor hungry dogs belly ;)
 
USC!
That's horrible.

I wonder though it is really worse killing the animal or letting it live injured. Particularly if you are willing to take care of it. its not like it would have to get food for itself or defend itself in the wild. Why not let him limp around and be a stud for the rest of his life?
 
LOL, Yes , but reality is horrible. Some people love cows, I consider them to be quite tasty and I'll bet you do too. I guess I am jut a bit to blunt of a realist sometimes. I mean the horse is dead, why let the protein go to waste ?

Also LadyT, I have been in and around the horse racing industry for many years. And it is not all about "man's love for horses" . But about how fast the horse can run for man. Some are in it for the love of horses, but that is not why the industry exists.
 
LadyT said:
USC!
That's horrible.

I wonder though it is really worse killing the animal or letting it live injured. Particularly if you are willing to take care of it. its not like it would have to get food for itself or defend itself in the wild. Why not let him limp around and be a stud for the rest of his life?
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You also have to understand how horses operate. One just can't "limp" around and certainly couldn't be a stud (except for an AI type). Most of the time a horse with such an injury won't have the proper blood ciruclation (due to not being able to move) and will die a very slow, painful death. After reading the article and knowing what I know about horses, stud fees and such I am sure they made the only decision they could.
 
Absolutely uscitizen. They would have done everything they could to keep that horse alive........and it all wouldn't have been about their emotional attatchment to the horse either. More about their financial attatchment. The business is more like the beginning of the movie Dreamer, not the end of it.
 
leaningright said:
You also have to understand how horses operate. One just can't "limp" around and certainly couldn't be a stud (except for an AI type). Most of the time a horse with such an injury won't have the proper blood ciruclation (due to not being able to move) and will die a very slow, painful death. After reading the article and knowing what I know about horses, stud fees and such I am sure they made the only decision they could.
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Actually that's a fair point. It does look like they did everything they possibly could have for it. That just sucks.
 
Yeah, often life sucks.

A good friend of mine dropped dead Saturday night, just an hour or so after I had seen him at the country store hangout.......


But then sometimes life is just wonderful :)
 
The horse had one of the poorest qualities of life during treatment that any horse ever had. Only the youngest and best horses can undergo treatment for a broken leg, often if you have too much money you treat the broken leg and forget about the horse.

Horses get extremely ill if they cannot put equal weight on each leg. It isn't like a dog that you can remove one leg and they can go on, they literally get a disease caused by poor circulation due to the fact that they cannot use the leg equally with the others... Infections and other problems are frequent when attempting to treat such injury...

While there are clearly surgeries and some horses do recover from some broken legs, it is not very likely your horse will and the treatment is often worse than the euthanasia....

The poor horse suffered mightily in their attempt to keep it alive.
 
Damocles said:
The horse had one of the poorest qualities of life during treatment that any horse ever had. Only the youngest and best horses can undergo treatment for a broken leg, often if you have too much money you treat the broken leg and forget about the horse.

Horses get extremely ill if they cannot put equal weight on each leg. It isn't like a dog that you can remove one leg and they can go on, they literally get a disease caused by poor circulation due to the fact that they cannot use the leg equally with the others... Infections and other problems are frequent when attempting to treat such injury...

While there are clearly surgeries and some horses do recover from some broken legs, it is not very likely your horse will and the treatment is often worse than the euthanasia....

The poor horse suffered mightily in their attempt to keep it alive.
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Just asking a general question here, but do Buddhists generally support euthanization?
 
That would depend entirely on the reason for euthanasia.

Is it voluntary or involuntary? Such as with brain death without clear indication of the wishes of the patient, involuntary, or a person who knows they are terminal and in great pain, voluntary.

It can also be separated into active or inactive euthanasia. Active, something is actually given to hasten the death, inactive is when treatment is withdrawn and nature takes its course.


Buddhists will have different answers as to their view. It can appear to be compassionate to end the life of suffering upon request of the person dying. However, pain and suffering can be enlightening, are you depriving the person of spiritual growth that comes along with the suffering? Some truly fundamentalist Buddhists would deny even pain medication that would take some suffering from the death.

Personally I take a view that active euthanasia of a person would be unwholesome at the best.

Now you take pets into account... What can a pet learn from their suffering? Without the higher consciousness what lessons may they learn? Do you deny the pet experience that may be necessary? IMO, without the higher consciousness the pet is denied the lesson from the suffering, compassion allows for the early termination to end needless suffering in creatures without that presense of mind. Others in Buddhism would disagree, but many would agree.

Here is a good article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/buddhistethics/euthanasiasuicide.shtml

Buddha's teachings never spoke directly to euthanasia...
 
Well, clearly I don't know jack about the teachings of Buddha, but what you said regarding people seems to make sense in the context presented. But I would have thought that pets would have been a different story since you can never really know what they want.
 
LadyT said:
Well, clearly I don't know jack about the teachings of Buddha, but what you said regarding people seems to make sense in the context presented. But I would have thought that pets would have been a different story since you can never really know what they want.
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It is always tough... You have to weigh the circumstance. In Barbaro's case they prolonged his suffering through action, I believe that to be very wrong, especially when the likely reason was monetary.

When the cure is worse than the disease should you continue to press on? With our last dog we gave medication to ease the suffering and allowed him to pass, but if the medication increased the suffering to prolong his life I never would have considered it for even a moment.
 
Damocles said:
It is always tough... You have to weigh the circumstance. In Barbaro's case they prolonged his suffering through action, I believe that to be very wrong, especially when the likely reason was monetary.

When the cure is worse than the disease should you continue to press on? With our last dog we gave medication to ease the suffering and allowed him to pass, but if the medication increased the suffering to prolong his life I never would have considered it for even a moment.
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It's difficult, though, because you can't ask the animal whether the cure really is worse or not. It's always open to interpretation.

That said, horses suck. Stupid, useless animals. Better they should be used to feed dogs. Dogs are cool.

:gives:
 
OrnotBitwise said:
It's difficult, though, because you can't ask the animal whether the cure really is worse or not. It's always open to interpretation.

That said, horses suck. Stupid, useless animals. Better they should be used to feed dogs. Dogs are cool.

:gives:
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actually, that reminds me. I should market a new type of dog food called, "Cats"...Fileted and cubed!
 
LadyT said:
actually, that reminds me. I should market a new type of dog food called, "Cats"...Fileted and cubed!
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That would be inefficient, to say the least. You could feed your basic dog for quite a while on a single horse, and horses, as herbivores -- albeit primitive, inefficient herbivores -- are less expensive to raise.

Kill horses, not cats!
 
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