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can’t fend for themselves. They depend on people, especially as they get older and develop ailments and special needs.

“First of all, be aware of your responsibilities in horse ownership before you take on a horse,” advises Bogley. “Don’t take on a horse if you can’t make a lifelong commitment. I ask people: do you know where your frst pony is? Most people have no idea. Ponies just get passed and passed and passed. In their golden years, when they need that care, they usually end up in a bad way…”

Bogley knows where her frst pony is. Stormy was older when she started out with him, but he stayed in the family and eventually went back to her mother. He was euthanized when he was about 45.

“We can start by educating people. If you increase the quality and decrease the quantity of the horses you’re breeding, everyone will beneft,” states Bogley. “That’s not going to happen overnight. They did a study many years ago and learned that it would take four years to see a higher quality, lower quantity. In the Thoroughbred, Arabian and Quarter Horse industries, people pay a lot of money to register a horse. It means nothing in terms of quality. You can register anything and it’s just more fling of paperwork.”

Savvy breeders slowed down on reproduction. They’re still feeding their mares, but they aren’t footing expenses for young stock that might not sell. Like real estate, it’s a buyers’ market out there.

“Another solution is to educate the public about the necessity of humane slaughter of horses in the US which we can regulate and which is necessary because of the severe overpopulation problem,” says Bogley.

The AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) are not pro-slaughter, per se, but on their website they state: The AVMA opposes the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (AHSPA) because it is, quite simply, a bad bill that ignores the real issue— what do we do with all of these unwanted horses? Eliminating an option for their disposition does nothing to solve the problem, it only adds to it.

“The animal rights people were going to take away that option [humane slaughter regulated and monitored within the US], but they had no plan B for what people could do with these horses. The general public also doesn’t understand there is a huge over-population problem in horses, just like in cats and dogs, because there is no regulation of the breeding industry. Up until four years ago there was a market for horses – not only in riding horses or horses for sport, but also in horsemeat. Now, we’ve taken that market away, the value of horses has dropped [with the recession], and there is a dreadful overpopulation problem.”

The animal rights people used videos and photos of the rare occurrences of mishandling in slaughterhouses to their advantage in a massive shock campaign to gain support to outlaw horse slaughter. The last three slaughter facilities to close [in 2007 President Bush signed the bill that outlawed horse slaughter in the US] – Illinois and two in Texas – used a penetrating captive bolt, one of three methods of euthanasia recommended by the AVMA. The other two are lethal barbiturate injection and gunshot. “Over 98% were done humanely with the captive bolt – when you’re slaughtering 300 horses or however many in a day, of course, you have occasionally a horse that doesn’t quite ft into the squeeze chute and throws up its head and the cowboy doesn’t catch him exactly where he’s supposed to,” explains Bogley. “Those are the videos that you see. HSUS, SPCA, all these big animal rights groups – they don’t show you the hundreds of other horses that went through on their videos for six hours, they pull out that one when something went wrong. Something always goes wrong in everything in life, nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed.”

What is guaranteed now is that there are still 100,000 unwanted horses, far too many to be taken in by already over-stretched rescue outfts. The animal rights people crowed about their victory in reducing animal suffering by the US ban on horse slaughter; however, many experts in animal welfare disagree emphatically. TheAVMA’s substantial FAQ about unwanted horses and slaughter (see end of story for link) expresses their concern that following the closure of the American facilities, regulated by the US Dept of Agriculture, horses are suffering far worse fates by being trucked to slaughter in Mexico, where the USDA has no jurisdiction. “The stabbing and severing of spines is what’s happening in Mexico,” says Bogley. “If it’s not done exactly correct, it is very inhumane. There is no humane slaughter act in Mexico. We cannot regulate anything once the horses leave the US. They’re mass-slaughtering ten times the number of horses they usually did, because of the horses coming in from the US. They did not have that number of horses before [the shutdown of US facilities]. They’ve got horses just fowing into Mexico.”

“My thing was humane transport,” explains Bogley. “About 20 years ago, a friend who’s now an attorney in Kentucky and I took a year and we documented and videotaped all of the horrors of the transportation of horses for slaughter and we were able to introduce some new language into the federal transportation laws for horses.”

Their work changed federal laws. No more double-decker transporters, and the visually impaired or blind horses had to be led by hand onto the truck and loaded separately. Good changes were being sought by animal welfare groups in the years leading up to the legislation being passed in 2007 to outlaw horse processing plants within the US, but the plight of these unwanted horses has taken severe turns for the worse.

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