Shelters inundated as owners can't care for horses

The woman who called Regina Martin's animal rescue farm was desperate to find a home for the horses she no longer could care for.

"If we weren't able to take them, she would have to sell them at auction," said Martin, who runs Hog Heaven Rescue Farm Inc. in Crawford County. Martin couldn't take them and said, if auctioned, the horses could end up in slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico.

It was the sixth call about unwanted horses she received last week.

That woman's frantic call and the surrender of three parasite-ridden foals in Westmoreland County illustrate a growing trend: A souring economy and soaring feed costs are forcing more equine owners to surrender or abandon horses. Some aging horse owners are physically unable to care for their animals.

Droughts in the South and West have pushed up the price of hay. The price of a 50-pound bale has nearly doubled to $3 in some areas of Pennsylvania, and is $6 to $10 in some southern states. The price of oats and other grains have gone up.

"People have no idea what to do with them once they get them," said Jan Dillon, 45, an agent with the Humane Society of Westmoreland County, which routinely receives calls about neglected horses.

Without intervention, the three foals would not have survived the winter, Dillon said.

Many unwanted horses will starve, said Darlene Moore, who cares for about 35 unwanted horses at her Save A Horse Stables in Sycamore in Greene County.

"A lot of ponies don't have someone like me, so they just die," she said.

Hog Heaven spent $18,000 last year on hay to feed 60 rescued horses. It now has 41 rescued horses and recently began restricting the number of horses it will accept.

A growing need to care for confiscated horses spurred a Western Pennsylvania horse owners group to form the Second Chance Equine Association, which rescued 35 horses in its first two years.

"I never knew there was this great a neglected or abused problem in the area," said the group's president and co-founder, Bryce LeJeune.

Most owners who surrender their horses do so to avoid prosecution, LeJeune said,

"People have called us to ask if we'd accept their horses, but we can't," he said. "We'd be overrun."

During better economic times, the "mystique" of horse ownership attracted more people to buy horses, LeJeune said. "And a lot of people don't know what they are getting into."

Equine officials said it's hard to measure how many of the 9 million horses in the United States are unwanted. Pennsylvania has about 250,000 horses.

"Backyard owners are not necessarily members of any organizations. It's hard to quantify," said James. J. Hickey, president of the American Horse Council in Washington.

Baby boomers contributed to the horse boom of the past decade.

"When they built their McMansions, they put the stable out back with a fancy cupola on top and put five ponies on an acre," said Joann Mauger, 64, who heads the Large Animal Protection Society, a nonprofit in Lancaster.

They didn't necessarily learn how to care for the animals.

"Horses don't come with a manual," said Mauger, who fields about 200 calls a year. "We see ponies that are thin, with bad teeth, and their owners say, 'We didn't know they needed their teeth done.'"

Elaine Gower has confiscated 12 horses in the past six months, including a pony that was in bad shape.

"They are dirt cheap," said Gower, an agent with the Somerset County Humane Society. "You can get them for $50, but then there's all those other bills."

Gower sees a lot of backyard horses in Somerset County, where there are no county or township zoning laws.

"Almost anybody who has an acre or two can have a horse," she said. "They are becoming very popular as pets."

The estimated cost of providing basic care for a horse ranges from $1,800 to $2,400 a year, according to the Unwanted Horse Council, formed in 2005 to help educate owners and breeders about horse ownership responsibilities.

Nearly half of horse-owning households or operations in Pennsylvania have gross annual incomes of $20,000 to $49,000, and 15 percent earn less than $20,000 a year, according to the Equine Protection Network.

Until last year, unwanted horses could be sold for slaughter in the United States, their meat going to consumers in Europe and Japan. But Congress, under pressure from animal rights groups, closed the country's three remaining slaughterhouses. Because of the wave of abandonments, some horse lovers are reconsidering their position on the issue.

Moore said she doesn't like the idea of slaughtering horses, but wonders: "Where do they go?"

The American Horse Council is urging breeders and potential owners to consider their responsibilities to the horses before they buy, Hickey said.

Horses can live 20 to 25 years, and owners should be ready to make a commitment for the life of the animal, he said.