Hello,
I’m sorry to say that I, too, have followed the saga of this horse and felt that the situation wasn’t as it was initially presented. Like many of you, I was trying to think of a way to get involved after reading the posts about the vet stating that Seger only had one month left. Unfortunately, he was euthanized the next day.
I’ve been trying to think of some constructive advice I can offer. You are a very well-educated group of posters, and most of my points have been made by others on this board. Perhaps it would be helpful to explain how animal control works.
For starters, the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) are national organizations whose work involves education and promoting legislative changes. ASPCA also has some animal control functions in New York City. As frustrating as it is, neither HSUS nor ASPCA has the authority to go onto anyone’s property and seize, or even examine, their animals, even if deliberate cruelty is involved. Only people who are legally allowed to enforce animal control laws in your city or county can do that.
Animal control authority is delegated to certain parts of the government, or to private groups, but this varies tremendously from state to state. For example, in Texas and Kentucky, the sheriff’s department responds to complaints of horse abuse. In Virginia, I believe one of the state vets must investigate large animal complaints (but not dog or cat calls.) In some areas, the county may have contracted out animal control to a non-profit agency.
Sadly, in some states, animal control only implies dog control or dog and cat control (yes, there are areas where they aren’t even legally obligated to respond to calls about cats!) In West Virginia, for example, the state cruelty codes do not apply to horses. If someone is starving a horse, at least in some counties of WV, there is nothing that can be done.
By the way, any non-profit may call itself an SPCA, or a Humane Society. However, neither the ASPCA nor the HSUS controls those local groups. There’s no copyright on the terms SPCA or Humane Society, so any group can use those titles.
Animal control investigations are bound by most of the same laws as any criminal investigation. The police cannot walk into your house at will, and animal control cannot walk into anyone’s barn or explore their property without either the owner’s permission, or a search warrant. They can make observations from public places, though - for example, starving horses may be seen from the road. That observation may be enough to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, if the owner refuses to allow animal control on the property.
There is a tremendous difference in how well animal control responds to horse calls, as some of you have observed. Enforcement tends to be more lax in the more rural parts of the country. One of my jobs at HSUS has been to teach equine cruelty investigation classes to animal control officers. ACO’s, as you can imagine, are much more experienced with handling dog and cat calls. Many of them are at a loss when confronted with a complaint about a horse, and have no idea how to counsel owners. (And, unless the animal is in immediate danger of dying, their job is to teach the owner to do a better job. They can’t confiscate the horse immediately.)
What owners themselves cannot or will not see is truly amazing. Again, to second some other observations, owners themselves won’t see or acknowledge that a horse’s bones are protruding. Equally amazing is how often they absolutely do not want to give up their horses, no matter how obvious it is that they’re over their heads. Those cases that involve ten or twenty or more horses being starved, happen all over the country. I will be helping out with a very large confiscation in a few weeks. These owners have horses, llamas, emus, everything, and were taken to court last year, with orders to improve the situation. The only reason animal control hasn’t taken the animals already is because they’re having to expand their facility to house them all. They’re expecting a court fight of at least 8 months before they’re given custody of the animals. And until the court gives animal control custody, the county is responsible for all the expenses of maintaining the animals, and may not adopt them out.
(I think I’m also trying to explain some of animal control’s hesitation to react as we might want them to, when we call in with a complaint about a horse. The case mentioned above is being handled by an outstanding agency.)
Okay, what can you do? Call animal control/sheriff’s department/whoever is in charge in your area when you see a legitimate problem. If they don’t respond, call them again. And again.
And a previous poster made an excellent point. Get involved politically in your area. Make sure your animal control regulations are adequate. If they’re not, work to have them changed. Make sure the judges and prosecuting attorneys in your area, who will have to sign search warrants and try these cases, understand that you think animal control is important. On this bulletin board, I’m preaching to the converted! It’s all those non-horse people out there that need to be educated.
I hope some of this has been informative. I’ve included contact information in my profile, but please be gentle - I don’t have a secretary to help with responses!
This has been a very sad situation, on so many levels.
Ellen Buck, D.V.M.
Director, Equine Protection
The Humane Society of the U.S.
I’d be happy to collect the information or help in any other way EXCEPT for making the page.
Ok extreme, but you get my drift.