Pennsylvania: 4 horses seized (Philadelphia, Quakertown)
Okay, so you’ve realized you are in a crunch and can’t afford to keep your horses, and decide to try and sell them rather than let them starve, even though the market is saturated with horses for sale and you wouldn’t even make enough to pay for gas if you took them to auction.
Let’s assume — since we don’t know otherwise — that the owner was doing her best to give these horses a chance. Someone decided they didn’t want her skinny horse — and didn’t want to take the chance of the horse not selling before it became critically thin — so reported the owner to authorities. Now the owner is facing charges.
Starved Horses Rescued By Last Chance Ranch [link]
CBS 3 | Mar 19, 2009QUAKERTOWN — Four horses are alive and well following an SPCA raid of a home in Philadelphia. Animal rescuers at the Last Chance Ranch say that the horses were saved from a lifetime of malnourishment, disease and filth.
The horses have been at the ranch in Quakertown where they have undergone treatment, but are still a long way from being at full strength.
“She needs at least 200 to 300 pounds,” said Lori McCutcheon about ‘Saddie’, the skinniest horse.
The horses belonged to a woman who was trying to sell them. When prospective buyers saw how malnourished the horses were, they contacted authorities who charged the owner.
“She ended up getting in over her head and couldn’t afford to feed them. She was feeding them about a handful of hay twice a day for four horses,” said McCutcheon. “It’s not necessary, there’s help out there, people who will take care of animals.”
In the few days the horses have been at the rescue ranch, they have not stopped eating, sometimes even fighting over food.
The stark contrast of the sprawling acres in Quakertown is vastly different from the tight confinement of the city.
“It was three feet of swamp that she was standing in, manure and muck; it wasn’t a place to have anything, let alone a living, breathing animal,” McCutcheon said of the horses dirty legs.
The ranch handlers believe it will take nearly three months to fully rehabilitate the animals before they will be ready for adoption, a process that will cost the ranch thousands of dollars.
With the overpopulation and rescues full, there is virtually no way to give away or sell a horse you can’t afford, and euthanasia is expensive.
Had to giggle to myself about the comment the reporter added about them “even fighting over food” … um, yeah. Horses do that. Fat, skinny, ideal — that’s what horses DO. Look up pecking order. It’s common knowledge to people who actually know horses, but something to glorify to sell a story for those who don’t.
Also, if the horses were standing in “three feet” of manure or muck or just plain mud, which is pretty common in spring pastures, why does the caked-on mud seem to stop just below the knee?
More when I find it.
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