After a recent study was conducted in Ireland, the population and the Irish Equine Center have managed to get a better read on the past situation with a number of neglected and unwanted horses across Ireland. It was a few years back during a large recession that hit the UK, Ireland, and the US bad, which led to much media attention directed to Ireland and people leaving their horses to die due to a lack of funds to care for them and thinking of the horses as a luxury they couldn’t afford rather than an animal to be cared for.
The study revealed that there was no huge difference between Ireland and the US when it came to the recession and horses. A number of farms had gone about neglecting horses in the US as well, there was simply more media focus on Ireland which led to many people thinking there was some huge unwanted horse problem in Ireland at large.
The overall research actually concluded that most of the horse owners who couldn’t support their horses after the economic downturn resorted to legal and responsible actions such as reducing the production in the amount of horses they were creating from that point onward. And that the majority of abuse cases were no higher than the cases they normally received and on par with the US and the UK’s numbers for horse abuse cases before the recession.
Overall however, the unwanted horse situation is certainly not out of hand in Ireland, with authorities only rarely finding abandoned horses and even more people moving to responsible means of taking care of their horses.
What do you think?
Source: http://www.thehorse.com/articles/34298/how-ireland-is-managing-its-unwanted-horses