Horse Fighting in the Village of Conception
Maria Teresa Libres is a social worker who works in Conception, and she was our guide to the village. After we arrived, I met the Mayor of Conception, Ben Pilota, and the major’s wife treated us to lunch. I ate some kind of fresh water snail there. Watch the video, below to see me eat the snail.
Snail eating video, 320 x 240, 158kbps 5.83 MB, 5:13 minutes
Snail eating video, 160 x 120, 55kbps 1.95 MB, 5:13 minutes
See my Village of Conception Photo Gallery.
Tom Fagan refused to watch the horse-fighting, saying it was inhumane and constituted cruelty to animals. See his video about that here or click on the photo, below.
I, on the other hand, grew up around horses, spent years around horses, used to fox hunt around Charlottesville, Virginia, when I was going to prep school there. I’ve been kicked and bit by horses, and I’ve bred horses, and I can tell you that horses lead a rough and tumble life. I’ve seen a few horse fights too, but never one which was organized for sport.
From what I’ve read about horse fighting on the Internet, horse fighting is widely viewed much as Tom Fagan calls it, inhumane, and cruelty to animals. I think this is a pretty ignorant view.
Horses are herbivores not carnivores. Horse’s teeth are all like molars, they are not made for killing or drawing blood. Dog fighting may be inhumane and cruel, because often a dog is killed or well shredded by the time the fight is over, but in the two horse fights I watched and recorded in Conception, there was not any blood, and the mare got most of the kicks in on the stallions.
These horses were not “forced” to fight. As you can see at the end of the 2nd Horse Fighting video, the losing horse decided he had had enough and left the field.
1st Horse Fight, 320 x 240, 158kbps, 34.1 MB, 30 minutes
1st Horse Fight, 160 x 120, 55kbps, 11.4 MB, 30 minutes
2nd Horse Fight, 320 x 240, 158kbps, 10.8 MB, 10 minutes
2nd Horse Fight, 160 x 120, 55kbps, 3.64 MB, 10 minutes
The other day I was driving through Cogon and I was stopped behind a motorcycle that was stopped behind a flat-bed cargo truck with dual rear wheels. A little kitten ran under truck and I was trying to see if the kitten ran far enough under the truck that when he pulled forward he would not run over it, but the guy on the motorcycle in front of me was leaning back and forth trying to determine the same thing as I was and he made a better door than a window as I couldn’t see anything. Anyway, the truck pulled forward and the cat was smashed flat. I mean that kitten could not have been more than a half an inch thick, including it’s fur. However, the kitten’s head was not run over and it was looking around like, “hey, what happened to my legs? why can’t I move?” I don’t think the kitten lived for more than a few seconds after that because it certainly could not breathe. My point in mentioning this is that shit happens.
Did I enjoy the horse fighting? Hell yeah!. Did I chuckle when I saw that little kitten’s head looking around with a flat body? Ashamedly, yes, I did. That poor little kitten, but I couldn’t do anything about it. And I can’t do anything about the horse fighting either.
Life is tough. Live it up while you can.
October 11th, 2007 at 06:27
[...] On the flight back I sat next to a New Zealander and his wife, who were missionaries, returning to The Philippines after spending two years back in New Zealand re-acclimating their two teenage children to the real world, after having prior to that spent five years in tribal villages in The Philippines converting the pagans to Christianity.  I asked him if I could interview him for my blog and let him talk about some of his previous experiences in The Philippines, and then broke out my laptop on the plane and showed him the videos I had taken in the “tribal” Village of Conception. After seeing the photos and the videos, he told me that Conception was nothing like the villages he had spent time in, that he had been in really remote tribal villages. [...]
June 18th, 2011 at 16:13
I enjoy horse fighting very much. It would be great if you can tell me where I can buy vid´s only for private use. regards Ulrich