Accidents are terrible things. A horse buyer (not a slaughter buyer) acquired 50 horses from sales in Minnesota to take to his farm in Kentucky. He’s known to other horse owners in his community to buy these types of horses and re-sell them to riding camps and trail riding programs. He hired a double-decker livestock truck to haul them home, and he was riding in the cab of the truck when the truck overturned, tumbled down an embankment, and crashed into a utility pole. At least 21 horses ended up dead at the scene, and others were injured. Contrary to what you might think at first blush, the horses don’t appear to have been bought for slaughter, we don’t know if the rig was overweight (the driver said he’d gone through a weigh station in Indiana and was okay, but didn’t have a log book to prove it), and you can haul private horses any way you like. (Even slaughter horses can be hauled in double-decker trucks until 2007). While we haven’t talked to the horse owner, we heard from secondary sources who have, and they say he is devastated. On top of that, irate people have been stopping by his farm to abuse him because they think he did something illegal or immoral. He didn’t do anything illegal as far as we can tell, and morality is certainly personal enough not to inflict it on others without knowing the whole truth of a matter.

How many times have we said, "Wouldn’t it be great if someone would buy the likely horses out of sales and find them new homes instead of them going to the killers?" Doesn’t that sound like what this fellow was doing? Was he making a profit? I certainly hope so. If not, he would go out of business and the few horses he could save and re-sell would be lost to the camps and farms.

I don’t know whether this fellow has a good heart, is totally calloused and concerned only with money, or if he is doing this because his daughter’s dying wish was to save as many horses as she could, and he’s carrying on for her