I usually wrap up the year for Horses and the Law with a chronological review of what I consider the most important, or interesting, or just plain weird developments in equine law during the previous 12 months. While I was putting this year’s list together, it occurred to me that I was ignoring the best barometer of interestÑyou, the readers who comment each week.

I threw away my list and started tallying the comments generated by each of the columns in 2011. After discounting my own comments for tabulating purposes and deleting the occasional pingbacks (I’m still not sure what those are), I came up with the list below.

There were some surprises. A few of my favorites, columns I thought were especially insightful or clever, didn’t make the cut. And the diversity of topics at the head of the list was unexpected. Slaughter always is a hot-button topic, and my guess was that all of the top comment-generating columns would address that issue. I was only partly right. A couple of unfortunate events and an individual lawsuit also attracted a lot of attention. And I was puzzled when the debate over wild horses and the Bureau of Land Management attracted relatively few comments