Animal Abuse at it's Worst

This may be the worst case I've shown on here. It's not the worst I've seen, but it cracks the top ten.

http://www.southwestiowanews.com/articles/2010/04/11/council_bluffs/doc4bc12ab67a72d868346240.txt [There are pictures.]

A mare with lacerations along the right side of its mane, stomach and hindquarters. A mare whose once beautiful coat is now mangy and matted. A mare neglected and abused by a vicious stallion, left to fend for itself while the owner did nothing to protect it or some 40 other mares.

But even the photos can’t convey the emotional distress suffered by the horse: The sleepless nights, the hiding, running and trauma. And a fear so strong that even when loving humans arrive to her rescue, her only response is to cower.

When Genea Stoops of Hooves & Paws Rescue in Glenwood received an e-mail notifying her of horse neglect in Shelbyville, Ky., she knew she had to do something.

When Shope arrived to get the mare quarter horse on March 31, she found a mother mare and 3-day-old foal also being terrorized by the stallion. So, after loading up the first mare, she returned to get the other two horses and discovered yet another abused mother mare that is pregnant. She returned on April 1 to get the pregnant mare. The owner wouldn’t surrender the horses, so Hooves & Paws and New Beginnings raised $1,200 in six hours to purchase them.

The stallion was attacking the mares, biting chunks of skin off their bodies. A stallion running wild among mares is not common, according to Stoops.

“You do not do (that). You keep your stallions away from your mares, until it’s breeding time,” Stoops said. “He was just terrorizing these mares. The owner of the horses should’ve separated them.”

Both Stoops and Shope declined to reveal the name of the owner, but Shope detailed the terrible conditions the owner left the horses in.

In addition to doing nothing about the stallion, the owner fed what Shope said she calls “pig food.” The owner would collect rotten food from area grocery stores in a garbage bag and then toss the bag over the fence to the horses.

“He wouldn’t even open the bag up,” Shope said. “These horses didn’t know what real horse food (grain) was. I sat it in their stalls and they just looked at me.”

She said the horses at the Kentucky farm occasionally get hay, from neighbors who sneak it to them without letting the owner know.

The Shelbyville ranch still has 40 horses, including seven mares and a stallion Hooves & Paws are targeting to save in the near future. Stoops and Shope both agreed that tougher animal-abuse laws and education are the only way to prevent abuse of this magnitude.

“The laws (against this) are worthless,” Shope said.

She said that if the two rescue organizations had filed a legal grievance to get the horses removed it would’ve only resulted in a misdemeanor charge against the owner. Even if convicted, it was likely the owner would’ve received a fine and had the horses returned to him.

“I don’t think it’s a misdemeanor to have a mare struggling for her life, or any animal for that matter,” Stoops said. “We deal with this everyday and we don’t understand it.”

You're not alone. Someday, somehow, that's going to change. Most animal abuse cases aren't even worth the money that goes into them to most people. It takes months, even years, to go from the first trial to conviction.