A dead man’s will draws attention to the plight of Maritime horses competing in hauling matches at agricultural shows, who are often ill-treated until their strength fails, and they’re doomed to become horsemeat.
Published: The Globe and Mail, October 3, 1992
BY DEBORAH JONES/HALIFAX
WHILE New Brunswick lawyers wrangle over who should have custody of Canada's most famous draft horses, King, Barney, Jack and Bill, thousands of other "gentle giants" are heading for competitions at fall agricultural fairs where they will be ordered to haul heavier and heavier loads until, drenched in sweat and exhausted, they can haul no longer.
The hauling matches - and the training that goes into them - is a cause for concern among animal-welfare advocates like Jim Little, chief inspector with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New Brunswick. "I have grave concerns about the training methods of many of the horsemen," he says, adding that while the matches are popular in most small community fairs around the Maritimes, some larger fairs, like one in Fredericton, have stopped holding horse pulls because of complaints of cruelty. Every time a fair is held, he says, the SPCA receives complaints.
It was dislike of the horse pulls that led Clive Wishart of Tabusintac, N.B., to protect four geldings, King, Barney, Jack and Bill. Several years ago, he bought them from someone who used them in hauling matches. Mr. Wishart turned them out to pasture on his large farm. He then stipulated in his will that the RCMP should shoot them when he died so they would not be abused again.
But after his death more than a year ago, the RCMP refused to carry out his wishes. This week, a New Brunswick judge overruled the will. The question of where they will live is still to be decided.
Horse lovers and animal-rights campaigners in the Maritimes have been worried that training draft horses - such as Percherons, Clydesdales or Belgians - involves cruel practices. They charge that in some hauling contests, in which a horse's performance is ranked depending on its weight (a one-ton horse pulls one ton), the animal is starved so that the weight demands are reduced.
Once horses can no longer haul, they are often deemed fit only for horsemeat. "In all the little towns, people keep draft horses just for (hauling)," says Mr. Little. "They're not useful for anything else. In most cases you wouldn't ever hook such animals to a sleigh or a hay wagon, because they'd just bolt."
Draft horses are giant beasts that eat a bale of hay and buckets of oats daily, can reach six feet high at the shoulder, weigh about one ton and have hooves the size of dinner platters.
In times past, they were as essential to rural Canadian life as tractors are today. As recently as 20 years ago in the Maritimes, they were still extensively used by woods- men for hauling trees out of the bush and were harnessed on occasion for real farm work. Today they can still be found in front of a plough - mostly on hobby farms; some work the coastline of Prince Edward Island pulling seaweed-harvesting rakes.
A few of them are kept as outdoor "pets" or used for promotional work (breweries are particularly fond of them), shows, recreational hay rides and sport.
Traditional horse pulls, in which animals strain for six feet pulling sleds laden with sand bags measured against the weight of the animal, remain popular throughout the Maritimes. But some fairs have banned pulls outright, or changed the rules to prevent abuse, says Marlene Langille of Hopewell, N.S., who with her husband trains and sells draft horses, and shows them in various fairs.
In Pictou County, says Mrs. Langille, "for a good number of years we didn't have a pulling match. Now we have put it back in, with teams (judged on) pulling the heaviest load rather than pulling pound for pound. They pull a stone boat with weights on it . . . until it's too heavy and then they stop. We have a 20-foot pull, with three tries, so the horses are not smashing at it, and they're not killing themselves.
"There have been instances of cruelty," says Mrs. Langille. "But on the whole, I don't think that's the norm. It doesn't happen every day."
Dr. Art Ortenburger, a professor at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown, says, "No question, it's a fact of human ownership and use of horses that they behave for us, whether in a rodeo or for contest pulling or a pony trotting around a pasture with a child on its back. They feel they don't have a choice. They feel disciplined; the human being is always perceived as the dominant person in the relationship. That's one of the definitions of a domestic animal.
"It's a difficult problem to define - what is a justifiable use of a whip to correctly discipline a horse, and what is inhumane and pointless?"
Lorne Harding, a neighbour of Mr. Wishart's, is caring for King (a five-year-old Belgian) and Barney, 7, Jack, 9, and Bill, 7, all of them Percherons. He hopes they can stay in pasture in Tabusintac. "These are special horses, everybody loves them," he says. "I couldn't tell you how many people come to visit the horses."
Deborah Jones is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail.
Copyright Deborah Jones 1992
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