Reply #22: Many people should not own horses - or only where they can be supervised [View All]

[csziggy]

I've owned horses for over forty years and bred and boarded horses. I've had to refuse to sell colts to idiots who think they want a stallion even though they had no clue how to handle an already trained adult horse, much less deal with training an intact young stallion. I've boarded horses for people who had no business owning one - the couple who could not even put a halter on their horse correctly much less tack it up correctly or safely for riding would have been a danger to themselves and the neighborhood if they had put the horse in their back yard as they originally intended.

These days many people do not know how to handle domesticated species such as dogs and cats - just watch The Dog Whisperer. I feel sorry for the dogs with the ignorant handling they get from their owners!

As for reptiles in captivity, they can be safely handled and kept, again IF the owners will learn how to care for them. But as the growing populations of released exotic lizards and snakes in South Florida illustrate, many just dump the creatures when they get larger than expected. Iguanas and boas are cute and relatively easy to deal with when they are young, but when they get older and much bigger, they can be dangerous. Now people in South Florida are worried about losing pets and small children not only to alligators, but to snakes and large lizards. http://myfwc.com/nonnatives/exotics/resultsClass.asp?taxclass=R

Nile monitors are now an established breeding population - these critters can grow to five feet or more and could endanger many native species as well as domestic pets. Pythons and boas have become common and are often found ten foot long or better close to neighborhoods. Two incidents of python vs. alligator have been documented, though in at least one case, both lost: