Animal Consciousness

What Kind of Intelligence

I recently viewed a PETA commercial that compared a family with pets. Designed to be a satire, the message was one of “sure—breed all you want and we will dispose or perhaps keep and love some of the newborns.” I found this message cute as a satire but distasteful. The point PETA was attempting to make is valid however. What is it that gives us as humans the prerogative of life and death over the animal world? Is it our so-called right of dominion spoken of in the religious texts?

It might surprise you but the 1936 Kentucky Derby winner, Ferdinand, was later slaughtered for food. Apparently gaining even the fortune and fame that comes with winning the Kentucky Derby is insufficient protection against winding up dead at the whim and will of some human. What does this say about being human?

There was a time that I raised horses and cattle. I owned an all breed stallion station and racing stable. We had a number of stallions for breeding including several that were mine. Naturally we handled hundreds of mares every year that belonged to other people who brought their horses to us for breeding.

One day my Foreman came to me about a customer who was delivering his mare for breeding. The mare did not have the required health papers that I insisted on before entering our facility. I went with him to meet the customer myself.

I saw the mare standing in front of the barn offices as I approached. She was obviously wormy--boney with long course hair. There was a new filly sucking on her. After the amenities I told the owner that he would have to come back when the mare hit her thirty-day heat (he had brought her in foal heat which means the filly was only a few days old). In the meantime, he should worm the mare, give her inoculations and get health papers on her. The owner was quite upset about this inconvenience. He insisted that we should take the mare. I tried to explain to him that the mare was not in the best of health for breeding and that to protect his investment he should worm her lightly with a paste wormer before tube worming her. Too good a kill on the worms could send too many dead worms down her digestive track and this is known to colic and kill horses.

The owner insisted that he had made arrangements to bring the mare to us in foal heat and that he had paid the stallion fee and therefore wanted the mare bred now. I refused finally pointing out the breeding contract required the mare come to us with current health papers. The owner drove away mad.

He went straight to a vet who gladly tube wormed his horse, gave the mare her shots and hung health papers on her. This vet and I did not see eye to eye so I was not surprised to see his name on the health papers when the owner returned with the mare and foal. We had no contractual choice at that point but to take the mare and do our best.

Two days later the mare was in trouble. I received the phone call at home during dinner. I instructed that our farm vet be phoned immediately as well as the mare owner and they were to keep the mare up and walking—she had colic and that was discovered during early evening watering and checks. (For those of you who don’t know, colic is an attack of acute abdominal pain localized in a hollow organ and often caused by spasm, obstruction, or twisting, and it is the number one killer of horses. What kills them is that they distend or twist their intestines and die of peritonitis).

When I arrived at the ranch the vet was already there. Soon thereafter the owner and his entire family arrived. It was a large family with seven or eight children. The night drug on. My Foreman and I took turns walking the mare. We had done everything that we could do. The mare was given drugs to relax her and minimize the pain and we had oiled her stomach. The vet and I chatted when he left at around 11:30 pm that evening, both of us knew the odds were against saving the mare. She had laid down and now refused to get back up.

I went to the mare and took her lead line from my Foreman. I sat down on the wood shavings that covered the indoor alleyway and arena the mare was lying in. I lifted her head to clear her eye of the shavings and after brushing the eyelid and lash clean, laid her head in my lap. She was a beautiful young mare and she just looked at me as I gently stroked her about the head and neck.

Her foal was free in the alleyway not far from us. Some members of the owner’s family were around the foal talking and petting and the remaining people in the barn were standing near the entrance to our coffee lounge speaking to each other. For a moment the mare and I were alone, eye-to-eye, sharing only the deep sadness of the moment.

The barn was full. The alleyway separated the stalls on each side of the barn that was 303 feet long and 60 feet wide. The stalls on both sides were 12 foot by 12 foot and the horses in the fifty plus stall barn were all turned away from the lights that lit the alleyway and entrance to the barn. It was midnight and the well past their bedtime.

I stroked the mare and heard her filly neigh. I saw her eye roll some toward the filly and I thought of how sad she might feel if she were human, and I wondered if she was. I spoke softly to her reassuring her that I would see the foal was taken care of. She looked at me and the breath left her body. Still and dead, her head lay in my lap and only I knew that—at least as far as the humans present were concerned. For just as her breath left her every horse in the barn turned and came forward, leaning their heads over the stall door into the alleyway and, as though on cue, they all began neighing, whinnying and otherwise setting up a vocal ruckus. Somehow the horses knew.

My Foreman asked, “What’s wrong with the horses?” I simply told him that the mare had passed.

I will never forget that evening. How is it possible that the horses knew this mare died at exactly the moment she passed? She made no sounds. I made no announcements. How did this information pass to them? What is there about animals that we do not know? How can we arrogate so much special-ness to our human species and no so little about others?

I don’t claim to have the answer, but I am certain that whatever we do with animals we should do it with respect.

Thanks for the read and I love to hear your viewpoint,
Eldon