At sunrise monday morning our four horses; Shoni, Moonlight, Elena and Kadoo, had found their way out of the field and went exploring. They entered several farms, had a bit to eat here and there and ended up at the neighbors field who has two horses.
By the time we reached to bring the horses home, they had eaten a lot and had a pecking order fight with the neighbor’s two horses, Ayiti and Destiny. All were quite exhausted, and came to us to get their halters on ready to go home.
Walking home, Kadoo was unusually tired, and he even tried to lay down on the road before we reached home. We though he was dehydrated and headed straight for the water buckets. Shoni, Moonlight and Elena drank lots of water, but Kadoo laid down two meters from the buckets and did not want to drink anything.
This was worrying. Maybe he just needed some rest?
A very long half hour passed.
Then we tried to give him some sugar water, but no luck, no interest to drink at all.
The other horses stayed close.
Then Kadoo’s breathing and stomach moves started to become irregular. We tried to get hold of a vet; if this was colic, we knew we had to force him up and walk him.
Cramps got worse so we forced him up. We could not reach the vet but reached another knowledgeable horse person who also advised us to force Kadoo up and make him walk.
Kadoo got up and slowly moved 40 meters to the next pasture.
Reaching there he just laid down again. As the other horses came, Shoni, to my surprise, tried to get Kadoo to stand up, I had not seen this behavior before, only read about it. It was very touching to see how Shoni stood close and tried to bite Kadoo in the front feet, to get him to stand up.
So we all got Kadoo up again to continue walking.
During the first half hour, he tried to lay down several times, but then we could enter into a joint rhythm and we just kept walking.
In this pasture we have a round pen inside the pasture so it was easy to just keep walking around it. After some rounds of walking the other three horses joined us. This was unexpected and a very beautiful experience having our 20 feet move in a steady rhythm, round after round.
After an hour finally came a fart, a poop, a lick and a chew.
After two hours Kadoo headed for the bucket of water and emptied it.
What a relief.
We were exhausted and happy. He survived.
The colic might have been caused by the herd walking into a field sprayed with toxic chemicals, which has become normal in today’s food production.
The chemicals kills everything except the one single plant the farmer wants to produce.
Modern agriculture is one of the biggest drivers of species’ extinction, loss of biodiversity and accelerated global warming. The capitalistic system drives the destructive farming practices.
Capitalism is chasing endless expansion. It is an economic system that must grow indefinitely or cease to exist. And it has to grow at a rate, leading it to commodify and consume ever-greater portions of the planet (Link to the Documentary Planet of Humans by Michael Moore).
There is clearly a fundamental contradiction between our economic system and the environment upon which we all depend. But since capitalism grows in an uneven manner, a few people can live obscenely affluent lives while other people face an ecological catastrophe.
The rate of extinction far exceeds the rate of creation of new species. Over the last fifty years a shockingly 40 percent of the world’s flora and fauna have become extinct. The extinction rate is accelerating.
Some of the richest places on Earth in terms of biodiversity are tropical rainforests. And these rainforests are being burnt and chopped down at alarming rates.
Why is this destruction taking place?
While they may be rich in biodiversity, the countries where rainforests are located are poor in economic terms. With few exceptions, they were subjected to colonial domination and in recent decades, have struggled to escape crippling debt repayments imposed by nations like the US.
These places also inherited extreme economic and social injustice from the colonial era. In a country like Brazil only 3% of the population owns 66% of all arable land. So while poor farmers cut down the forest in a struggle to survive, huge agribusiness corporations pay loggers to fell trees in order to grow crops and raise cattle and GMO Soy for Europe and USA.
Today’s mass extinction crisis is one of the clearest indications we have of the fundamental irrationality and destructiveness of the capitalist system.
This system is causing the Sixth Mass Extinction in Earth’s history.
– 60% of the vertebrate species declined between 1970 – 2014
– 25% of all mammals, 14% of all birds, 31% of all sharks and rays are threatened with extinction
– Coral reefs are dying from heat stress caused by Global Warming – and the list goes on
The air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we plant in, the food we eat, and the beauty and diversity of nature that nourishes our psychological well-being – our very health – all are being corrupted and compromised by the human values behind our political and economic systems and consumer-focussed lifestyles.
We have to stand up for life.
We, that is You and Me.
That is now and at all times.
Gather your Herd and get growing!
We must defend our Mother Earth – The only Home we know.
Stina
Yurumein Horse School (St. Vincent) 