I was 11 years old when I went to my first horse auction. Right here in Holbrook Long Island. An older riding buddy invited me and I thought maybe I’d get a deal on some saddlery. Standing there as the horses came through I remember looking at a pretty black and white horse, and my girlfriend saying ”That horse was bought by the killers.” I said what do you mean? She said the killers buy horses and slaughter them for dog food. I told my older sister about this. Barb was already a nurse making money at the time. Barb took me back to that sales stable and we walked through the field sizing up the horses that were destined for the next sale. I commented on a skinny lame Appaloosa. I was quite surprised when he was delivered to our house a couple of days later. A horse for me to rehabilitate. He had horrible thrush in all 4 hooves and I spent that winter soaking them. He later proved himself to be a reliable riding horse. There were also horses that we would come across that for one reason or another were not being taken care of properly and we would find them homes. It was all pretty grassroots. During the 90s when I had my boarding stable I did the same thing, rehabilitate & rehome. When the Clydesdales came along I tried to see if I could get other people involved, and created SEER. Luckily Lisa De Kooning stepped up. The rescue of the Shires was a tad more brutal. I’ve written about all these things in the blog “Tales of MaryLou.”

Slaughtering horses was outlawed in the United States but that didn’t solve the problem. Now a horse that goes to auction and is bought by the killers in Pennsylvania or New Jersey can be loaded onto a cattle car and shipped to California, sold at another auction, and then shipped to Mexico to be slaughtered. They ship lame, sick, babies, and pregnant mares all stuffed in with no water food, or bedding. Then they arrive at the slaughterhouse and smell the fear and blood. I am not writing this from the point of view of an emotional train wreck. It’s bigger than that. As I have said it many times, the horse’s value is in its etheric body. What is truly perverse is that these animals are not just being taken out of the earth plane they’re being terrorized and going out in extreme fear and pain. Inflicting or you might say imprinting soul damage, is truly evil.

I am inspired by the work of rescue organizations like All Seated in a Barn in California and Gentle Giants’ Draft Horse Rescue in Maryland. Not only are they buying/saving some of the horses in kill pens, but they are also working on lawmakers.

It’s not feasible to have a large rescue organization here on Long Island for a lot of reasons. I hatched an idea on that. Organize a grassroots rescue. Home the horses in backyard barns… Hamptons estates with Pasture Ornaments. Seriously. Do you want to rescue a horse? Do what my sister did, and buy one (or two). And I’ll do what I did.

This is the time of year when people start dumping old used-up work horses at the sales. There is a religious group called the Amish that doesn’t use cars or tractors, just horses, and they think God put animals here for us to USE and ABUSE. I, on the other hand, tend to agree with the late O’Shinna Fastwolf: an Apache Medicine Woman who believed they are here to heal “the stupid two-leggeds.“