About Abuse

What Every Horse Owner Needs to Know

Deanna Woolston

When I first saw her, she stuck out literally and figuratively. Her bones were sharp angles and pressed against her skin. Her fur was dull and patchy and covered with bite marks from the other horses. She was in a big herd—some lovely, others ordinary and yet she constantly drew your eyes because of her stomach-turning thinness. She seemed a few breaths away from death.

This horse was part of a trail riding business outside of a remote tourist town. I spent my summers working in the little town and would visit the horses once in a while just to be around horses. As soon as I saw her, I vowed I would try to help her and I did—but only temporarily. I asked her name and one person who worked with the horses said it was “Spot” for a light colored spot on her otherwise chestnut hip and another said it was “Lady.” I called her “Stick.”

Small town politics meant everyone knew everyone else. I quickly learned that I had to handle this case very delicately or I would make matters worse. The owner of the horses had a couple of problems with substandard care in the past and was sensitive about people interfering. Usually, when there was a serious problem with a horse with this outfit, their solution was a bullet.

This town was a couple hundred miles away from an Animal Control, a Humane Society or even a vet. So I drove out to visit Stick every night armed with beet pulp, grain and brushes. The owner realized my intention wasn’t to draw attention to him, but rather to help this horse.

Through persistence I finally convinced him to allow me to bring her closer to where I lived to try to fatten her up. Stick soaked up the extra attention as much as she did her food. For the summer I was on a quest to make her healthy. Everyday, I couldn’t wait to go out and see her.

When a vet did travel to town, I was told Stick was in her late teens and several hundred pounds under weight. Her poor condition was likely because she didn’t have any molar teeth and was low on the horse hierarchy. I wormed her, gave her shots, and put her on a diet of good hay and lots of mushy, easily digestible foods.

Slowly, too slowly for the three months I had with her, she started gaining weight and her coat improved. When it came time to leave, I felt sick parting with her. I knew her owner wouldn’t sell her because he was worried about his reputation. I also knew I couldn’t afford to move her the 2,000 miles to my permanent home. I tried to make arrangements for people to look out for her. I talked to her owners about what she needed—but I knew in my heart she probably wouldn’t make it. This was five years ago now and everyday I still think about her, hoping she is alive and thriving or at peace. I felt like I failed her and every time I think of her my eyes sting with regret that I didn’t do more.

Chances are you have been around horses for a while and have seen animals like Stick—in dire need of someone to look out for them. While the state laws in Washington and Oregon are not nearly to the standard I would like them to be, there are some good people out there whose job it is to watch out for abused and neglected horses.

I spoke to several Animal Control officers in Clark County, Washington and one Legal Aid Officer for Multnomah County Animal Services in Oregon. These are the people on the frontlines looking out for dozens of Sticks every year. They are overworked and underpaid and public expectations of them are high despite the weak state laws they have to work with. At the request of an Animal Control Officer I have omitted first names and references to gender.

“Animal Control has evolved in our responsibility of what the public expects of us, yet the level of staffing or importance placed on it doesn’t seemed to have followed,” said Officer Rutherford with Clark County Animal Protection & Control. “Horses have gone from livestock or workhorses to being companion pets and the different levels of care and expectations people hold to that has absolutely changed. I don’t know if the laws have really kept up with that.”

In Washington and Oregon aggravated animal abuse is the only felony and everything else is a misdemeanor crime. “If you abuse an animal it’s a felony,” said Officer Luckey, Legal Aid officer for the Multnomah County Animal Services. “If you neglect them to the point of where they die, it’s a class A misdemeanor.” You can literally starve a horse to death and only get a misdemeanor.

In Clark County a cruelty fine is $100 per infraction. Officer Martin with Clark County Animal Protection & Control. said the amount is “almost laughable.” Martin pointed out that hopefully owners are spending the money they would otherwise pay to a fine on the horses’ care.

To make matters worse, horses fall under the category of livestock by law and receive less protection than cats and dogs in Washington and Oregon. For instance, both states require cats and dogs to have some kind of physical structure for shelter, but do not require anything like that for horses. Counties can adopt a more protective code and Multnomah County has. Clark County is working on revising their code right now.

“Our cruelty code for livestock is somewhat loose and sometimes people get frustrated with us, because they are calling in about issues that aren’t really a violation of the cruelty code but are borderline issues,” said Martin “We do a lot of work with horse owners providing information, doing follow ups, kind of babying them to the proper care of their animals.”

In both states the laws read fairly similarly. Livestock receive a bit more of the same protection as pets like dogs and cats in Multnomah County, but the fundamentals are the same. It is illegal to willfully or negligently physically mistreat, kill, injure, torture or torment a horse and you must provide for their minimum care, including feeding, watering and veterinary care.

Another problem is that Animal Control Officers can only address cruelty that they can see from legally allowed areas like an owner’s front door stoop or from a public road. “If the horses are inside barns and if the owner doesn’t consensually let us on their property and look at their animals than we need a warrant to get in,” said Luckey. “To get a warrant you have to have enough probable cause, which usually means a witness that is willing to testify that they saw something horrible there.”

The one case where officers are allowed to trespass is if an animal is in imminent danger. “If we have a call that is an allegation that a horse is down and it is actually dying or bleeding then it is probably okay to trespass based on the health of a particular animal,” said Officer Davidson, 20 year veteran with Clark County Animal Protection & Control.

When I asked for examples of what abuse looked like, officers from both sides of the Oregon-Washington border gave me gruesome stories of profound neglect where horses became walking skeletons like Stick (see Case Studies). “It’s usually people in the winter time who don’t have enough money or don’t want to feed their horses. So they literally don’t feed them,” said Luckey.

“The most difficult part sometimes is to see two horses in a pasture that look fine and then one who doesn’t,” said Davidson. “The horse owner says, ‘Oh it gets that way every year.’ They don’t ask why. You are not going to let yourself get that way. It may lose weight during the fall and winter, but it’s going to be so nutritionally damaged over a period of time that there is going to be a point when it won’t come back. And then what do you do?”

Read more about what to do if you see cruelty and/or neglect.