More on Frank “Clueless” Mackay
The tale of Belle and Sundance, the horses rescued from near death by the heroes of McBride, B.C., after they were abandoned to the fates by the hapless, clueless Frank Mackay, an attorney from Alberta, has prompted a lot of debate.
Here is one view posted at the Prince George Citizen website on whether Mackay should face criminal charges for abandoning his pack horses in the mountains:
Well then we better charge all the ranchers and outfitters that currently have hundreds of horses overwintering in the mountains too. Heck, its only been done for thousands of years.
And here is another, more thoughtful, view:
It won’t be up to the SPCA to decide – it will be the courts. As a former rancher who over-wintered horses, here’s how you do it. You make sure there is a place where they have access to water and food. That’s why ranchers have a fall round-up, to push stock down to lower levels. When snow is deep, food is unattainable, you feed them. That’s why people hay. Letting animals starve in the high country is NOT an accepted practice. Some of the people who organized this rescue are ranchers. That’s why the rancher sent a Winchester with his daughter when assessing these horses – if they were too far gone to save, they would have humanely been put down. These horses had lost half of their body weight, covered in sores, frostbite, dying of thirst and hunger. My nephew is from McBride, was involved in the rescue, saw the condition of the horses. Three were abandoned, two survived. This has to go through proper legal channels although I think the lawyer would want to avoid the publicity and relinquish ownership. He went back and found them, and abandoned them again. Left them oats and gator ade, earlier when there was less snow, not -30 degrees. He could have enlisted help then to bring them down but chose not to.
And that, to me, sums up the difference between a thinking person (second view) and a bonehead (first view).
Seems like Mackay is solidly in the bonehead category. I have read that some people add Gatorade to their horses water for the electrolytes, but forcing it down their throats by tube? Claiming his legs were too bad for him to participate in the rescue but apparently not too bad to take four horses up into the mountains in September? Comparing dying horses to unruly teenagers?
I almost burned my Bar membership card when I first read that the guy is a lawyer. Gives the whole profession a black eye.
What was he thinking?
What did his five buddies have to say?
My Healthy Horse 