03/02/2025
Many dealers prey upon the horses, the rescues and the donors. They want money, and we are all their targets.
Years ago, over a decade ago actually, a dealer befriended RF, or so we thought. He seemed nice and helpful, at first. He would bring horses 'for a bargain', offering in advance of auction. At first this seemed perfect, but it became... unsettling. As his 'customer', he was clearly finding horses to make money off of, and selling them to the rescue without any paperwork or any hassle. If he got the horse for free and flipped to us quickly for a few hundred bucks (not including trailering) he was happy. The paperwork part was illegal and could not continue, but more importantly, there was a morals question. Making money off horses' misery. It really came to a head when, one snowy weekend, the local auction was cancelled, and a broken mare in his possession, who was supposed to sell at that auction, was stuck in his barn. He called and offered us a deal for the mare, said she was a 'little thin' but a 'nice riding horse', and gave us a low price for a cash sale if we took her that weekend. We did. That poor mare came off the rig, barely able to walk, with twisted feet and nails coming out the bottom of her hooves where there used to be shoes. Our DVM came out right away. The chestnut mare was truly heartbreaking, and the idea of her being used for riding turned my stomach. He mentioned where she was from (yes, we know who you are) but she was another horse with no paperwork, just used up, and someone making a few more bucks off her hide. We purchased her, gave her a stall and pain meds, and named her Penny Lane. She was absolutely at the mercy of humans, so weak and scared, and so relieved to be somewhere kind. She laid down, and a day later, too weak to stand again, she was let out of her misery.
The former owners ought to have been prosecuted, but there are not enough law enforcement agents for all of the rampant animal abuse happening.
That purchase shook me to my core.
Soon after, we declined a horse he offered in a phone call, for a 'great deal'. He seemed to think we wanted the horse even cheaper, he did not understand that we could not keep helping him launder horses for a profit. A few minutes after we hung up, he called back, and said "If you think you will get this horse on the auction floor for less, you are wrong. My horses don't walk the auction floor. I park in the back, and the horses are taken out of my rig and put into the rig to the slaughter house for $$ per head. They don't see light of day again. If you don't buy this horse now you will never see him".
And I had naively wondered why his rig was always dirty.
One of our friends actually couldn't take this threat, relayed privately, and paid for the horse, had him dropped at a neutral location, a DVM. We picked him up from there. We found that he had recently been sold, then flipped out at losing his longtime home, new owner could not handle, and told his boarding barn that he was not paying for the horse any longer, to 'find him a good home'. He was a purebred Andalusian, half blind and with a broken heart, betrayed by his longtime home. That is how this horse got to a POS dealer, for free, and that is how many good horses end up on the wrong truck.
That dealer is gone now, but his ways of thinking are not. Rosemary Farm attends auction when there is room at the Inn, and we outbid dealers for these broken lives. And despite the first sentence, not all dealers are bad people, and not all play at this underhanded game of manipulation and back alley trading. But until horses are valued for their inherent selves, and given a better ending, we will keep making room, and helping those we can.
PS, I think I am relaying this so that she is not forgotten. We have not forgotten her.
A magical sanctuary for equines, 3 hours & a world away from NYC, home to over 100 rescued souls. Established 501c-3 charity. Visit this Catskills gem!
