Erin's back, and better than ever!

I’ve finally got something to say. I know it’s been a while. I’ve been pretty distracted. But last night, something caught my attention to the point that I was yanked out of my blissful selfishness. I was watching the news, and a story on the Kentucky Derby was aired; one of the horses, Eight Belles, was severely injured and had to be euthanized on the track. This is tragic enough, but what followed was, to be honest, sickening. The trainer was interviewed, and through tears, he praised the horse. But then he had the gall to say that race horses like Eight Belles have “given us everything they have. They put their life on the damn line, and she was glad to do it.”

….

Don’t you mean you put their lives on the line when they race? The last time I checked, these horses are forced to race. And trainers still have to “break them” to get the horses to the point that they will allow someone to ride them. Then the years of training punctuated by races where the horses are whipped and forced to run at break-neck speeds… What happened to Eight Belles (who was, by the way, only three years old) is eerily reminiscent of what happened to the famed “Barbaro” (another Triple Crown contender) last year. Call me crazy, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Eight Belles, instead of being trucked around from race to race and unfamiliar place to unfamiliar place, would rather be somewhere eating grass in a field. I don’t purport to be an equine expert, or even an equine enthusiast. But I really do think that a horse would rather run in a peaceful pasture than around a track.

As demonstrated by this egomaniacal trainer who was somehow able to not only own, control, and dictate the lifestyle of another living being, but who has now taken upon himself the right of speaking for that animal, people have a remarkable ability to rationalize some pretty illogical stuff.

We’ve all done it. I was a vegetarian, but I still bought leather shoes and bags. Why? Because I told myself they “last longer” than food; they’re reusable. And this is true. But I was an ethical vegetarian. My entire basis for removing meat from my diet was not dietary; I felt, and I told many people this when asked, that it was simply wrong to eat another living being when other options were available. So now that I was forced to put meat back into my diet (I suffered from severely low iron stores without it), I eat it every once in a while (begrudgingly, unless we’re talking cheese burger or hot dog). And I feel guilty every time I do. But I’ve been buying leather shoes the entire time.

This horrible event at the Kentucky Derby brought this ethical paradox jarringly back into the forefront of my mind. I’m glad they chose to euthanize Eight Belles right on the track, so the crowd was forced to witness the price that too often must be paid to purchase an hour or two of entertainment. It’s a dear cost, and I’m glad they had to see it firsthand. But I think the reason it upset me so much was that it revealed something in my life with which I am not entirely comfortable. In psychology, this principle is called “cognitive dissonance”. And psychologically speaking, human beings will do everything in their power to reduce this dissonance. It produces, quite simply, a really crappy feeling that most people just don’t like. They do whatever they can to “rationalize” their actions.

So the next time you get angry, upset, frustrated, or offended, it might be helpful to examine why you are upset. If you’re like me, most of the time, you’re really just angry at yourself.

….But I still think horse racing is cruel.