Response from Auction Board

I'm response to previous comment made by Cathy on her blog, Auction board posted the following comment on FHOTD. I believe that this the version that was posted on FHOTD:

As the primary administrator of the Auction Horses website, I would like to correct some points from Fugly's post:

1) " ... that board is full of some of the worst known bottom-feeding horse neglecting ignoramuses that aren’t welcome anywhere else, and people are funding their idiocy."

We have no control over who joins our board. The people Fugly is thinking about are members of several other rescue boards, and banning them won't accomplish anything. The two most well-known have left the board, and none of them received any direct assistance from the group beyond advice. We can't control interactions between two private parties either, but we are working to educate our members about where their money is likely to do the most good.

2) "Let’s just say that if a half-dozen people are telling you that someone is bad news, you might want to take note of that before you buy them a rescue horse they can’t otherwise afford."

As stated above, the board as a whole did not buy any of these people a rescued horse. The warnings came only after an unfortunate situation had developed, which took the majority of us very much by surprise. That situation has now been handled and policies put into place to prevent a repeat of this type of occurrence in the future. We do not wish to go into lengthy details here, but the information is available to anyone who comes to our site. We have nothing to hide and in fact welcome any inquiries, within reason.


That said, we are complete agreement with the general message of the article. Rescuing an animal at the last minute, with no plans for its future, is a very bad idea. We are now focusing on education as well as organized support for appropriate homes for auction horses.

Infighting among charitable organizations diverts energy that could being going into making a difference. Although Auction Horses is not technically a charity, the principle applies here as well. We welcome constructive criticism that will make our rescue efforts more effective. What we recently experienced and do no want to repeat was a drawn-out argument with few constructive comments and a great deal of repetition. This diverted energy from the goal we have in common, which is to provide good homes for horses when we can and humane euthanization as an alternative to slaughter.