$300 to Butcher a Horse

A teenager was arrested by the Hialeah and Miami-Dade police when he was taken with incriminating evidence and confessed to having butchered a horse in company with another man. The details of his act, for which he was paid $300 by someone as yet unknown, are so gruesome that I can't bring myself to put them into this entry. You can read more at the September 17 posting of The Miami Herald: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1237437.html.


Sadly, a September 10 posting at the same newspaper site tells us that a racehorse has been slaughtered. The police are investigating thoroughly to see if these two crimes are related and of course to find out who else is involved. Read more, if you can stand it, at http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/1225961.html?asset_id=12248.

If anyone has any information, please call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

Meet Me at Killer Nashville

A reminder that Killer Nashville, the mystery writers and readers conference, will be held Friday, August 14 through Sunday, August 16. On Friday from 2:30-3:30 PM, I'll be discussing "Animals in Mysteries" with my fellow panelists. For all the important details and to register, see http://www.killernashville.com/.

Mindless Atrocities

Ellyn Robinson, Vice President of the South Florida SPCA, wrote to ask me to tell my readers what is happening to horses in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties. Pet horses, the official number is now 17, are being hacked to death for their meat. The details of how Geronimo, Bonita, Linda, Comanche and others were butchered are so sickening that I can only think those who are doing it are in the same class of human criminals as Caligula, Herod, Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin Dada. They are amoral, cruel, greedy, and remorseless and they are always with us.

In this case, Ellyn tells us, the horse meat is being sold on the black market. Various estimates of the profits range from $7 to $40 a pound. Richard Couto, investigator with the S.F.S.P.C.A., says "Miami-Dade and South Florida is a melting pot....We have a lot of people, we have a lot of international people, from Asia, Europe, South, Central America and the islands. A lot of these countries, horse meat for consumption is legal. These people grow up eating this meat." (It is legal in Florida for owners to kill and eat their horses on their own property but the meat cannot be sold to others.) Ellyn mentions the irony in the fact that the horse meat is contaminated from antibiotics, de-wormers and other drugs that loving owners pump into their horses to keep them healthy. It's a case of the biter being bit when buyers are willing to purchase this illegal, ill-gotten meat and then get sick and possibly die from eating it. Some think that the killings are a result of the recession, that people need cheap meat. There is even a theory that there is a cultural belief that maintains that horse meat cures diseases.

A note about the wonderful South Florida SPCA and Ellyn Robinson: In one of the killings, a mare was killed but her foal spared. Ellyn and others are trying to get the owner to allow the SPCA to take the foal to its rescue ranch until the foal overcomes the trauma of witnessing his mother's horrible death. Ellyn says he's only about two months old. She has volunteered to pay the expenses for his care.

There is a reward fund being set up so that the police can get more citizen information. If you would like to contribute, please send your checks to:
South Florida SPCA
15476 NW 77th Ct #440
Miami Lakes, FL 33016
The memo line on the check should read: reward fund.
The check should be payable to the South Florida SPCA

Or:
Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers
Attn: Maureen
1030 NW 111 Ave.
Miami, FL 33172
The memo line on the check should read: Dade County Horses
The check should be payable to Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers

For more on this situation, go the the Protecting Horses link on my website at www.http.mmfisher.com.

Here are some helpful links:
www.http.helpthehorses.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/1161684.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=horse+slaughter&target=article&sortby=display_time+descending
http://cbs4.com/local/horse.butchered.burned.2.1104065.html
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Another-Horse-Cut-and-Killed-For-Meat.html
http://www.justnews.com/video/20203309/index.html

Killer Nashville Coming!

To all mystery and suspense junkies, writers and\or appreciative readers of same: Killer Nashville is rolling into its third year with three days of fun, Friday, August 14 through Sunday, August 16.

J.J. Jance, the popular and prolific mystery writer, will be the honored guest at Killer Nashville 2009. Author of so many thrillers and mysteries it makes your head whirl to read all her titles, she has written 3 thrillers and 34 mysteries (the latter includes three series). I can't wait to hear her speak. But there's a lot more: the web site promises over 40 panels and discussions. For example, the writing craft is well covered, and what you learn in the writing workshops and panels can be applied to all types of fiction and nonfiction and also specific genres.

To read a lot more more about the feast, go to http://www.killernashville.com/.

Zaporizhzhia!

The movie "Taras Bulba" (1962) has a score by Franz Waxman for which the composer received a twelfth Academy Award nomination. The story was adapted from Taras Bulba, the novel by Gogol. It's about the Cossacks of the Zaporizhzhia region in the Russian steppes. The music Waxman wrote for the ride of the Cossack tribes to Dubno to finally extinguish their enemies the Poles is so exciting and so exhilarating, and builds to such a crescendo as the Cossacks ride all-out on their vengeful mission, that I never get sick of listening to it.

The ride was choreographed with a horse-movie convention I always like. How many of you have ever seen this kind of scene? In the western, it's the "we're going to town to destroy the bad guys." The movie "Silverado" has one of these. In "Taras Bulba," Yul Brynner and his two sons start the journey to Dubno early in the morning, with the music starting softly. Then the music gets louder and louder as tribes of Cossacks join them from both sides yelling what sounds like "Zaporizhzhia!" until a great host of reckless, fierce, vengeful Cossacks is galloping all-out to Dubno. The music builds and builds and by the time the music ends triumphantly, they're riding into Pole territory and you know what they're going to do. If you've ever ridden a galloping horse, you wish you'd been in on the making of that movie.

I listen to it as I walk the track at my local rec center. Invariably, as "The Ride to Dubno" blares in my ears, I speed up. Regrettably, when this happens, I am compelled to pass the person in front of me, can't help it. Under the influence of this music, I've sped past people who are younger than me, even high school students on the track--and all due to this wonderful music.

Although the movie is cheesy in parts, it's worth buying the DVD for that scene alone. "The Ride to Dubno" is also known as "The Ride of the Cossacks," and has been played all over the world.

Searching for Henry Stull

Part of the fun of writing my latest novel, Painted Stallion, was researching Henry Stull, American equine painter (1851-1913.) Henry figures largely in the novel.

I'd first seen a Stull painting in a magazine and finding more on the Internet, was drawn to his glossy horses with perfectly depicted anatomy and jockeys with brilliantly patterned silks. The horses were often famous winners and the silks were accurate. But it also delighted me to see the "rocking horse" posture in which he often painted his running horses, front and back legs fully extended. I've learned since that many owners asked for that posture for years, even though it was unrealistic. It was a well-loved artistic convention.

I wanted to find out more about Stull and in my travels, visited the Horse Park and Keeneland Race Course libraries in Lexington, Kentucky; the Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville, Tennessee; and the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York. And my research for the novel paid off: it was in Saratoga Springs that in August 2008 I finally saw one of the rocking horse pictures. I'm sure the other artgoers thought me silly. I was grinning like a fool.

The Winners: Mullins and Lanzan

When I watch horse races like the Triple Crown, I marvel at the beauty and swiftness of the horses and the expertise of the jockeys who ride them. I always wonder how the riders keep their perfect, immovable posture on top of those madly galloping, plunging horses, and how a 115 pound jockey gets a 1200 pound animal to do his or her bidding? Horse racing, with all its issues, is still fascinating today because we get a chance to see the most accomplished athletes in both the human and horse worlds engaging in a contest of skill that is dangerous and thrilling and beautiful in its execution. But racehorses must be protected from possible injury by their handlers. And that's why I was so glad to see "I Want Revenge" scratched from the Kentucky Derby because trainer Jeff Mullins and owner David Lanzan found a hot spot on the horse's ankle. This is responsible racing. Read more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30533737/.

Temple Grandin's Wisdom

Temple Grandin's chapter on horses in her book Animals Make Us Human is filled with such valuable advice on working with horses that if I were training a horse I'd memorize what she says. Here are a couple of examples: "The real secret of horse whisperers and expert horsemen is that they understand the behaviors associated with different emotional states and they have also figured out that a reward or a cue has to be given within one second after a desired behavior occurs for the horse to make the association." And "Behavioral trainers never talk about vices and depravity. Behaviorists are some of the most 'optimistic' . . . trainers there are, because if . . . an animal isn't learning, a behaviorist is trained to examine what he is doing wrong, not what the . . . animal is doing wrong. This means that behavioral . . . trainers don't blame the student."

The Writing Life

I'm writing my second novel right now, the further adventures of Connie Holt of the McCutcheon Equine Insurace Agency. It's tentatively entitled, "The Painted Stallion." This time it's trouble in the dangerous world of the steeplechase and a new love affair. Usually when I exercise by walking, usually at a track or down the road to my town, I line things up in a row mentally, so to speak, about the current plot situation. Thus prepared, I go confidently to my computer to write my self-imposed 1200 words per day. But in the process of putting my thoughts into words, I find often that my mind says, "That won't do!" And all my preparation was for nothing. This morning for instance, I found more research was necessary about the race course described in the book, I ended up suddenly dissatisfied with the heroine's race attire and made it more characteristic of her personality, and I heightened a bloody scene with--yes--more blood.

Wild Horses in Trouble

The February 2009 National Geographic magazine, both paper and online, has an excellent but sobering article about the plight of the wild horses in the ten Western states where they are trying to survive. Writer Alexandra Fuller gives a little of the history of the horses and mentions "Cattle Annie" who was largely responsible for federal protection of the horses. (See my article about Cattle Annie in the "Protecting Horses" section.) Fuller points out that the wild animals have been besieged by stock men and their cattle and sheep, machines on their range, helicopters, cars, and trucks, and now the added insult, the struggle to find oil under the Western ground where these animals live. The Bureau of Land Management is supposed to see that they are safe and that they are kept at workable, manageable levels on the Bureau's 258 million acres. The Bureau oversees about 30,000 horses. At prescribed intervals, a number of horses are rounded up (called a "gather") by helicopters and cowboys and the animals have uncertain fates. A particularly interesting part of the article deals with efforts to try a contraceptive solution to reduce the numbers of the fertile mares, but Fuller says that the Bureau is cool to the idea. What's going to happen to these horses who many feel represent the spirit of America?

Frontal lobes only 3.5 percent of a cat's brain

All cats' frontal lobes are 3.5 percent of the brain compared with dogs' at 7 percent and we humans at a whopping 29 percent. I learned this from the wonderful book I'm reading, Animals Make Us Human. Written by the champion of animals, Dr. Temple Grandin, the book's chapters are divided into dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, chickens and other poultry, wildlife and zoos. I started reading about cats first because I live with the mysterious little beauty in the picture whose name is Autumn.


Dr. Grandin explains a lot of mysteries I've wondered about in Autumn and all the cats I ever owned, and indeed a lot of mysteries remain to be solved.


Just because a cat's frontal lobes are a smaller part of the brain, does not mean they are stupid. Indeed, they are, according to research veterinarian Dr. Karen Overall, who investigates behavioral medicine, ". . . really bright, inherently cognitive individuals. [People] forget the most critical need [for cats] which to me is the intellectual one. I think we haven't given cats or dogs the credit they deserve for their cognitive capabilities. I think we've got an epidemic of understimulated cats whose intellectual needs aren't being met." "Intellectual needs", indeed!


On the basis of what Drs. Grandin and Overall say about cats' needs to be stimulated, I performed a simple, unscientific, stimulation experiment today. I took all Autumn's toys away except for his well-loved foil ball which he hasn't been interested in for a long time. I put it on a table where it usually isn't found. After he'd eaten his breakfast, he found it immediately on his tour of his house, and later when I was at the computer, he meowed several times from down on the floor. There he was , the ball in his mouth for me to throw, a game he used to play with me when he was a kitten. He played fetch down the long upstairs hall at my house even batting it into another room at one point, until I had to go back to the demanding computer. A happy little experience for Autumn and for me thanks to Dr. Grandin's book.

Horses and My Family

Horses and my family go back a long way. My maiden name was Coultous, which a University of Edinburgh professor informed me meant "Colt House." How cool is that? I had relatives long, long ago, centuries probably, who kept horses. And here is a picture I treasure from my family archives of my relative holding a darn big horse who doesn't really look that happy!