Feed Your Tekes

A quick rant about feeding.  (Yeah, it's my blog - I can talk about whatever I want sometimes...)

People amaze me.  With as much nutritional information that is available in the world today, and with such an amazingly vast array of supplements and grains and forages that are available in feed stores - why in the hell do people still think it's okay to have skinny animals? 

One thing that you will never EVER see me do, is post pictures of skinny horses from my farm!  That does not happen here.  I like seeing nice fat healthy horses with no ribs showing, no matter what the situation is!  I guess that the only exception would be if it was an extremely old (30+ years) horse, or one that is in failing health - but NOT EVEN THEN would I find it okay to post emaciated photos, thinking that it was satisfactory to keep an animal in such poor shape.  There is such a thing as humane euthanization at a certain point...    

WHY for the love of god, are there still akhal teke people out there who think it's okay to have/ride/own skinny malnourished animals - and then,  post photos of them - like they are so proud to have a skinny rail thin horse?  Are they just stupid and can't see it....?  I am getting so dang sick and tired of it!  I've seen multiple photos in the last week of horses from one "breeder" that are ribby, rail-spined, sacral joints showing, and hip bones protruding terribly in the photos!  (And they are young horses.)  Ugh.  Sadly, I know that there are just as many, if not more, horses out there that don't get their photos taken - so nobody will know about their situation.

On the photos that were posted this week, I couldn't take it.  I didn't sit back and stay quiet.  The person has heard my opinion in a private e-mail.  Maybe now that it has been brought to their attention, they will start feeding their horses..... but most likely they probably won't.  They'll probably think that I'm just a quack, and dis-regard it altogether.

Sadly, off the top of my head, I can count at least three major offenders in the north american akhal teke breeders population that have proudly posted photos of their malnourished horses on some very public sites.  Why?!?!?!  The general public already has the impression that akhal tekes are willowy types of horses that are "greyhound-ish" in appearance - which is okay.
BUT........ could we possibly steer-clear of adding "starving" to the overall impression?  Please, pretty please....???????