Horse neglect on the rise

Cinnamon was loose, somewhere along Northeast 199th Street, when a concerned neighbor called Clark County Animal Control last year.

The malnourished appaloosa was more than 150 pounds underweight; her owner couldn't afford proper care. Cinnamon went to a foster home.

Cinnamon's story isn't unusual in a county that's home to some 35,000 horses, including ones, officials said, with owners ignorant of the care they need.

But now other factors, including rising hay and grain prices and dwindling opportunities to sell horses, are fueling neglect cases nationwide.

Clark County's on track for a record-breaking year of equine neglect.

"We've seen a 300-percent increase in calls," said Linda Moorhead, animal control manager.

In 2007, Moorhead's office received 102 calls about horse neglect. The first three months of this year produced 79 calls, compared with 25 for the same period last year.

Two of the county's five animal control officers specialize in horse care and are assigned to most of the horse neglect cases. While the calls account for only 4 percent of the calls received by animal control, they are more time-intensive than most domestic pet problems.

Some neglect calls involve owners with several sick and underfed horses, Moorhead said. For example, one owner of 24 horses agreed earlier this year to turn over all but five. Of the 19 she gave up, 10 were in so much pain they had to be put down. The rest went into foster care, a network of local horse owners willing to provide TLC until the horses are well enough to be adopted.

Horse owners should budget $300 a month, or $3,600 a year, per horse, Moorhead said.

Ideally, she said, overwhelmed horse owners unable to properly care for their animals would call animal control for help before the situation turns dire. The owners would be given a referral to the Clark County Executive Horse Council or Ripley's Horse Aid Foundation.

The council gives technical assistance and support. Ripley's, a statewide nonprofit based in Sedro-Woolley, gives temporary food vouchers, said Pat Brown of Battle Ground.

Three of Brown's five horses were taken in as foster animals, including Cinnamon.

Last week, the mare, which now weighs a healthy 1,000 pounds, squirmed happily on her back in the mud. Her pasture mates include Spirit, a gelding who was emaciated when he came to Brown in late 2006.

"Spirit was so weak he'd eat laying down," she said. "I'd put the bowl in front of him."

Some of Spirit's teeth are worn down to the gums from a lack of dental care. He's unable to chew hay, so Brown buys hay in pellet form, wets it and mashes it, much like if Spirit was a baby who has to gum pur??ed food.

Brown said too many horse owners in Clark County get in over their heads. The county has few guidelines for horse ownership; it doesn't have minimum acreage requirements, for example, even though a rule of thumb is an acre per horse. Misguided owners also think their horses will be healthy chewing waterlogged grass or eating local hay, when horses actually need nutrient-rich hay grown east of the Cascade Mountains. That hay is getting more expensive due to rising gasoline costs.

Brown's five horses require at least four hours of care daily: two hours for cleaning out stalls, an hour to feed in the morning and an hour to feed in the evening. That doesn't include time spent exercising them on her 7 3/4 acres.

"Before somebody gets a horse, they should lease one, to make sure it's their cup of tea," Brown said.

A rise in horse neglect isn't unique to Clark County. On Jan. 7, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story, "Leaner Pastures: As Horses Multiply, Neglect Cases Rise."

The Journal cited the closure of equine slaughterhouses as part of the problem.

"Until recently, a little-advertised market for unwanted horses existed at equine slaughterhouses, which in 2004 killed an estimated 65,000 horses, largely for human consumption in Europe and Japan. But the last three such plants closed in 2007, under pressure from animal-rights group," the Journal reported.

The horse neglect issue has received attention in Washington, D.C., too. A forum, "The Unwanted Horse Issue: What Now?" is June 18, co-sponsored by the American Horse Council and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Felida resident Sue Svendsen, former president of the Clark County Executive Horse Council, said that when slaughterhouses were open, owners who no longer wanted their horses could sell them at auction to buyers who would turn around and sell them for slaughter.

Owners could kid themselves by pretending that wouldn't be the horse's fate, Svendsen said.

"They'd always think their horses were getting a good home, but really they were just going to meat," Svendsen said.

Not only has that market for horses evaporated, Svendsen said, but owners don't want to pay the $150 to $200 to euthanize the horse and the $200 to have it hauled away.

"They got rid of horse slaughters without figuring out what they were going to do with all these excess horses," Svendsen said. "Where you used to get $500 for your unwanted horse, now you have to pay out."

Hazel Dell veterinarian Jack Giesy said some of the neglect he sees is unintended.

"You take a horse and you look at it every day, and you don't see it changing," he said. He recommends measuring horses every few weeks, writing the numbers on their stalls.

He gets calls from owners confused about why horses lose weight during the winter. That's when horses need even more high-quality feed, Giesy said.

"A horse needs long-stemmed fiber to stay warm. In the winter months, that internal fire keeps them warm. They eat more in the cooler months."

Another problem he sees are "backyard breeders" who don't want to spend about $150 to get their stallions castrated. The stallions mingle with mares, resulting in an overpopulation.

Svendsen said backyard breeders are turning out poor-quality foals nobody's buying, not when discerning shoppers can buy a nice horse for a few thousand dollars.

Another problem, she said, are owners who have moved to Clark County from drier climates and don't understand the damage rain can inflict, particularly on hooves left too long in mud.

"The feet just rot from right under the horses," Svendsen said.

People think, "Oh, horses do just fine in the wild without special care," she said. "Horses in the wild live to be 6 or 7 years old."

Cinnamon, the rescued horse, is in her 20s, said Brown. She and her husband would like to see Cinnamon and one of the other horses they took in as a foster horse adopted, now that they've been nursed back to health.

"(Cinnamon) has excellent manners," Brown said. "She's very polite."

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Information from: The Columbian, http://www.columbian.com