Love & Pray for Horses, but Don't Eat Them

View from the porch
By EVE MARX

Love and pray for horses, but don’t eat them

If you love horses and want to do some good, attend the benefit or get involved in the auction for Equine Voices to be held on September 25 at Old Salem Farm in North Salem. Cindy Marcotte, a Bedford resident whose sister Karen Pomroy is Equine Voices president and founder (Cindy is vice prez) is in charge of the event, which raises money for an accredited rescue and sanctuary for horses in Arizona, where Cindy’s sister lives. The evening will feature dinner, dancing, a raffle, a silent auction and a mounted exhibition by the Honey Hollow Pony Club at Old Salem Farm. Lendon Gray is the Honoree; chairs for the event are Cindy Marcotte and Lee Vogelstein. Among its other laudable achievements, Equine Voices helps pregnant mares who are exploited for urine collection used in the manufacturing of Premarin. Premarin is a female hormone therapy, and the most widely prescribed drug for managing the symptoms of menopause, hot flashes, night sweats and vaginal dryness. In other words, half the women you know are taking it, and if you’re over 55, you might be taking it yourself. The problem with Premarin is it creates cast off foals, i.e. baby horses, because to get the pregnant mare urine, the mare has to be pregnant. What happens to those foals afterwards is not pretty. It’s so not pretty, I’m afraid to write about it, for fear of instantly upsetting you and turning you off, possibly making you throw down the newspaper in horror and disgust. Don’t want to do that. Instead, focus on how there’s still plenty of time to do good and help out a lot of pregnant mares and their babies, and help Equine Voices get the word out to the public about this cruel industry. You know, if you’re suffering from hot flashes, there are other things you can do than take Premarin. Talk to your holistic health care provider, or Chinese medicine doc about it. Charlene Heller in Bedford Hills is an expert on Premarin alternatives. About Equine Voices and the benefit, contact Cindy Marcotte at HYPERLINK "mailto:cpmar@optonline.net" cpmar@optonline.net
For weeks it was too hot to get out for a hard, fast ride, so Buttons and I have been amusing ourselves creeping and crawling around the woods. We’re just walking and it is amazing what we’ve seen. One morning a great flock of wild turkeys ran across the path, a fox in hot pursuit. Another day we saw red tailed hawks. It’s pretty noisy in the woods what with a cacophony of bugs buzzing and the birds calling to one another and singing their heads off. The bugs really do create a din, and some of those birds, especially the crows, are real loudmouths. There’s plenty of deer, and if you’re one of those people who hate deer and can only think of how they ruin your garden, or risk your life running out in front of your car, you won’t understand the thrill of cantering alongside them which happened to me and Buttons when a pair of doe kept pace with us for about a quarter of a mile through the woods. We were on the trail and they were not, but we couldn’t have been more than a couple of yards apart. Buttons and I maintained a relaxed and steady lope, and I like to think they were pacing themselves, too, to stay right beside us. They didn’t seem scared of us, nor we of them. It was glorious, a real communion with nature.
The film “Eat, Pray, Love,” which is about a divorced woman and her world travels, opened last weekend and I for one am not rushing out to see it. In all fairness, we barely go to the movies, and then only to Jacob Burns. The last two films I saw were “Please Give,” which was wonderful, and “I Am Love,” which was not. The main reason I won’t be seeing “Eat, Pray, Love,” anytime soon is because Mr. Sax is not a fan of Julia Roberts. “I hate everything about her,” he said. “When I look at her I think of her brother, Eric Roberts, who she looks exactly like. Eric played psychos in every movie he was in. Remember ‘Runaway Train’? Also there’s something unsavory about the relationship between Richard Gere and Julia in ‘Pretty Woman.’ Need I say more?” he said. To be fair, I’m also not rushing to see the movie because I didn’t read the book. In 2006 when it was published, all my friends were reading it, especially my friends who are divorced. When one woman who’s never been married but who’s been engaged four times got all starry eyed about it, I knew I’d never read it, not in a million years. But I will watch the movie, next spring, I figure, when it plays on HBO or Starz, which you know it will, eventually. Sooner or later, everything does.