The story of Lucky Pal, captivated thousands in Sacramento and the surrounding areas, but the tale of the palomino yearling who was abandoned and left to wander onto a Wilton highway in October is also one of thousands that do not end as happily.
From California to Kentucky, horses are being abandoned and left to fend for themselves at devastating rate. Many blame the economy for the escalating numbers. Rising grain and gas prices coupled with an poverty stricken American landscape flooded with foreclosures, have all been pointed to as contributing to thousands of horses being forsaken.
Another factor attributed to the trend in dumping horses is the closure of many American slaughterhouses. Those who had raised horses for profit via slaughter, simply chose to abandon them when laws were enforced, ending the slaughtering of horses for human consumption in America.
The last slaughterhouses closed in 2007, but states, including, Missouri, Montana and North and South Dakota, for example, are looking at ways to bring slaughterhouses back as both a resolution to horse abandonment and as a method to prevent the exportation of horses to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.
A more humane resolution has begun to appear in the uprising of rescue societies across the country. Publicly and privately funded, shelters have opened there stables to treat and find homes for the disregarded. But the ratio of deserted horses to shelters available to care for them is still dramatically skewed against these animals in need.
Per his name, Lucky Pal, was one of the fortunate few whose story had a happy ending. But thousands of abandoned horses around the nation do not have a television station to broadcast their plight and garner the emotional, veterinary and financial support necessary to facilitate their chances of survival.
News10/KXTV