Why Do Horses Need Rescue?

"Premarin farms and similar overproduction at other breeding facilities, abuse, neglect, illnesses, injuries; these circumstances lead to danger and often unnecessary death (perhaps at slaughterhouses) for horses. This is where the rescuers step in."

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Undoubtedly, the best venue in which to look for the sad and unkempt is your local horse auction. You are almost guaranteed a manifestation of abuse and neglect. It is a forum in which horses that no longer produce to their owner's expectations are unloaded. One last payday this beast will offer his disrespectful owner.

Or perhaps the circumstances are a bit different. Individuals who operate as breeders and could not sell their broodmares' offspring through their network of customers, bring the young ones to auction in the fall to unload. The fewer the mouths to feed through the winter, the better.

If these horses were all going to new homes, this wouldn't necessarily be an unhappy ending. But, in fact, many of the horses who are sold at auction will not go to new homes. Horse traders make a living out of plucking up low-priced horses then turning around and putting them through the next auction down the road for a higher sale price.

Some horses bounce from trader to trader for many months like this, with or without proper care. Illness, lameness and problem temperaments are often masked with drugs or shoeing or other means just long enough to complete the sale. But horse traders aren't the worst fate the auction houses could hold. That title is reserved for people called killer buyers.

Within the bleachers amongst the lay-people sit these businessmen and -women. They aren't studying conformation or regarding the horse's movement. Instead, they sit and calculate profit per pound. They leave the auctions with loaded trailers, their purchases bound for slaughter.

Slaughter is an inhumane end to the lives of our cherished friends. To read more on horse slaughter in the US, click here to read from the fund4horses.org website.

Auction houses aren't the only setting for witnessing abuse and neglect. Although horse owners sometimes fall on hard times and temporarily cannot provide adequate care for their horses, these short-term circumstances in an otherwise spotless record of care are not the situations to which I allude in the following. But owners who consistently deny their horses a proper diet, water, turnout and hoof care are among the worst perpetrators of abuse. As well, those who use harmful, mean spirited measures to train their horses are equally negligent, but harder to pin. A horse may be abused in this manner, but not show physical signs, whereas those who are left without forage are unmistakable.

Sadly, these misfortunes are happening every day and are the genesis of your local equine rescue organization. It's hard and costly work rescuing and rehabilitating equine in need. Funds are needed to outbid killer buyers at auction, arrange transport, and buy feed, medical supplies and veterinary assistance, yet the reward given the rescuer by the animal itself is immense. EquineRescue.com would like to congratulate every rescue operation for their hard and valiant work. Keep up the priceless effort!

Quoted from Lara Barnes - EquineRescue.com