Thousands of communications are received from the horse-owning public each month at The Horse. Some are direct calls and e-mails, some are comments on polls, and some folks send us story leads or press releases. So when News Editor Erin Ryder said she was receiving more e-mails and other correspondence than usual about welfare issues, it really struck home. While we can’t follow up and report on all of them, there’s been a disturbing trend in the number of animals seized per farm. Instead of one or two horses that fell through the cracks of responsible ownership, we’re seeing double-digit rescues. And the organizations that take in these horses are strained to the limits to care for the animals and find temporary homes, much less place the animals permanently. Included in those correspondences are many pleas for us to pass the word about organizations needing help of some kind. Just this morning I got an e-mail from one lady who told us about several friends from a variety of rescues who attended the New Holland, Pa., weekly horse sale. Her friends reported sound horses off the track, empty broodmares, and others being offered, with only killer buyers interested. Individuals and groups step up, but they can’t staunch the flow of the tens of thousands of horses needing help. And some of the rescue groups themselves are requiring “rescue” after they get in over their heads and can’t care for their rescued horses.

National Clearinghouse

We need a national network to certify equine rescues and coordinate funding, donations (money and goods), feed, and even allocation of the animals into and out of the groups.

While you’d like to think this would be roundly supported by rescue and welfare groups, it’s sadly not true for many of them. They are territorial and want to protect their donors from outside influences. They don’t want “outsiders” trying to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do for the health and management of horses, or even how to go about acquiring the horses and dispersing them to foster or adoptive homes