• The Cuuuuube
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        179 months ago

        If you’ve never done it before, congratulations, try to keep it that way. If its your first time you’re going to want a tube of greese paint or some chalk. Draw an x using it from the left eye to the right ear, and the right ear to the left eye. The convergence point is the thinnest part of the skull. You’re going to want to use a small caliber hand gun for this next part. .22 is what most vets recommend. A police service pistol is way too much and will make a huge mess. You’re going to shoot the horse at the center of the x with the gun held very close, but not directly on the horses head. The idea is you cannot miss from this distance, but you also won’t create a pressure problem that causes the gun to misfire. The idea with all of this is its the least likely for mistakes. In an emergency, such as shipping a horse overseas on a plane, a trained attendant will use a higher caliber handgun, such as a .38, and skip the x, instead eyeballing it.

          • The Cuuuuube
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            129 months ago

            Both my parents were large animal vets. I kinda didn’t get an option not to learn this

            • 7heo
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              9 months ago

              Nah, I didn’t fly much, or in ages. Tooth pain an pressure changes don’t go well together. 😬

              But I can totally imagine that being crammed in a metal tube for hours at a time, alongside several dozen/hundred other humans, can very easily become an unpleasant experience.

          • The Cuuuuube
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            79 months ago

            Attendants ride with the horses when shipping overseas. If a horse panics it can imbalance the plane leading to catastrophic failure

              • The Cuuuuube
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                29 months ago

                They are sedated to oblivion. Its just that like any sedative or anesthetic it can wear off if things get so stressful that the drugs turn out not to be enough.

                  • The Cuuuuube
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                    19 months ago

                    The horses that ship internationally like this are generally worth $1M+ so its not like this was the solution every settled on as “eh, good enough” and more like, even with all this time and effort, this is still the beat solution we can come up with. Also for what its worth, I don’t know that this measure has ever been taken in my lifetime. The sedatives have always worked in every case I’ve know. Putting down a horse in international shipping for safety is an extreme edge case