Abandoned horse likely to end up in a can

Foothill resident Anita Koops said people need to know what happens to horses that are abandoned by their owners.

"If the horse is captured, it's taken to Fallon where they do a brand inspection," she said. "Then they go to auction."

Auctioned horses often end up on store shelves as dog food, Anita said.

"There's nobody anyone who loses a horse can call to get help," she said.

She points out that someone who loses a dog or cat has lots of people to call.

"I picked up a booklet at the grocery store and counted 40 facilities to report a dog or cat missing," she said. "But if a person opened a gate and a horse got out, if they don't find it, it can end up in Fallon and there's nobody to call."

Anita said some folks think that because a law was passed to keep horses from becoming human food, that they are safe from slaughter, but they're not.

She said she rescued 25 horses over the years that were being auctioned when she lived in California.

"Unfortunately I wasn't able to keep them all," she said. "I didn't make any money on any of them. Two of them were deemed untrainable and sent to the slaughterhouse. I rescued them and made good riding horses out of them."

Her 34-year-old horse, Boomerang, is the last of her rescues.

"When I saw him being bought by a killer, I rescued him," she said. "I've never ridden him. I told him 'it's like this, you'll never live fancy, but you'll eat well.'"

Anita plans to call the governor's office with the issue.

"It's not a big problem yet," she said. "But people who are turning their horses loose have no idea they may end up being killed."

Gardnerville resident Kathy Hart has published her first book, which is available on Amazon.com.

The book is called "I Caught God With His Pants Down," and describes a spiritual experience she had.

The book was published Aug. 14 through a group called AuthorHouse.

"I am a very spiritual person that had the most beautiful vision and dream," Kathy writes in the author's page. "This is a gift that needs to be shared with all humanity. Hopefully we can all become closer to a God of our understanding, and love one another in the most divine way."

Kathy moved to Carson Valley from Huntington Beach, Calif., in 1998.

"This is a gift I want to share," she said.

Ruhenstroth resident Jerry Spivey, whose dog Millie was shot near her home in August, said he adopted another wiener dog from the Douglas County Animal Shelter.

"We call him Friday because that's the day we got him," Jerry wrote. "He won't replace our Millie but he is a very lovable dog and he fits in here with our other dogs. So whoever shot our other wiener dog didn't solve the problem."

It was traditional for the hero of a Roman Triumph to be accompanied by a slave who whispered "memento mori" in his ear. The Latin phrase means "Remember, you are mortal," and is an excellent reminder for anyone making too much of their own success. In Wednesday's story about The Record-Courier's general excellence award, the story ended in the middle of a paragraph. The final line was "The Record-Courier last received the top award in 2006. It came in third in 2007."