I’ve been around horses my entire life and thought I had seen it all. Tonight, I found out I was wrong. I’m a subscriber to several horse rescue groups on Facebook. Last night, a beautiful 5yo pinto TWH mare came across my screen. I’ve been casually looking for a small gaited trail horse and something about this horse caught my eye. I saw a 50 second video of her and knew she needed to be mine. She was currently in a kill pen waiting for someone to bail her out.
So, after an almost 8 hour trip later, she is sitting in my barn. However, I would like to wash my eyes out with bleach after what I saw when I picked her up. There were horses, well over 100, packing into several barns. Hay and water in front of them, all being fed up to be shipped to a slaughter plant out West. I literally wanted to stand there and cry, knowing that almost every horse I saw, would soon be killed. Most already have their shipping tag on. This was not a tag from a sale barn, but rather a tag to track them from the kill buyers farm until the horse is actually slaughtered. My mare had already been tagged. She was literally a walking dead.
She almost knocked me over to get on our trailer. It was only a two horse trailer with a ramp, but she was ready to get the hell out of there. We also took two minis and drove them four hours round trip to their rescue facility in WV. So, three lives were saved today. I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight. The eyes of the other horses in the kill pen are already haunting me.
Here is my new girl. Still thinking of a name, but at least she is safe. The first picture is the one that caught my eye on Facebook last night of her at the kill pen. The second is her enjoying her fresh water and yummy hay this evening at our farm.
I stayed to the end of that auction to try and save her; offered $25 and a great home. She went to a kill buyer for $75. I was working 3 jobs to get by and couldn’t afford the $75 to save her. Haunts me to this day.