The Horse Nobody Wanted

Warning: This will not be a feel-good post. You may want to skip it if you're having a bad day already.

Left at an livestock auction yard to be sold, this blind horse got no bids--not even from the buyers there to acquire horses by the pound.

See the horse in the accompanying photo? You can see him, but he could never see you. That's because he's blind--as blind as they come. Take a close look at those feet. They not only haven't been trimmed by man in, oh, I'd say a couple of years, but also haven't even been worn down by movement of the horse himself. Seems pretty obvious to me that this pathetic animal had stood in one place, eating whatever's been put in front of him, for a considerably long time.

I took this picture of him a few days ago, when he turned up at our area livestock market for its monthly horse sale. This is the kind of sale that could be nicknamed The Cleaners, because for the most part, it's where people bring horses they've decided to be rid of. Most are sold loose, like cattle, and their weight flashes on a tote board as they walk across the sale ring's floor-scale. Depending on their size and degree of flesh, maybe on some other quality that allows them to find a new owner "out in the country," they bring $35, $85, $150, $275, $350 a head.

A good 90 percent of the horses sold at an auction like this will be swept into three or four kill-buyers' holding pens. The sellers know this. The crowd knows this. It's a livestock market, after all, where horses follow cattle, hogs, sheep and goats on the day's auction docket. A few folks are there looking for a cheap riding horse, maybe some old gelding suitable for the grandkids.

But for the most part, this is a meat market, part of agricultural commerce. No different than the ones my dad went to, four and five days a week, while earning a living as a sheep and cattle buyer, and from whence he fetched me the 2-year-old gelding that was the first horse I bought with my own money.

Back to the blind horse. When it finally got to be his turn to sell, he didn't elicit a single bid. Not even from the kill buyers. Not even for the auctioneer's final offer of $5. Not even from anyone who might have had the impulse to rescue him.

Biggest reason: His lack of sight made him nearly impossible to move. He wouldn't lead, and could barely be herded, even by multiple men. You had to wonder how the owner had even gotten him to the auction yard (but then again, probably wouldn't want to know). He never did step on the weight scale--he just pressed himself against the gate, refusing to step on the scale's shifting surface.

To a buyer with a load to fill and move on, toward Canada or Mexico, he was just a big liability. Not worth the trouble to bother with.

To someone feeling the pluck of heartstrings, he was a series of questions that couldn't be answered in the 30 seconds it took for him to be no-saled. How would you ever get him home? What would you DO with a blind horse? What would it cost to be the one taking the merciful step of just having him be put down? What would your husband say? (Add your own questions here.)

I saw the market owner after the sale. I asked him what happens when a consigned animal doesn't sell. "We'll call the owner and tell him to come get it," he replied. "Think they'll show up?" I asked. He shrugged. "Never know."

And to think...we still have those who maintain that there's no such thing as an unwanted horse.