An Ancient Collaboration
“For millennia, horses helped us build the modern world. At beginning of the 20th century, Americans had 20 million horses; every family more than one. Now, there are four million horses in the U.S. About 40,000 of those are “unwanted” and needlessly euthanized or cruelly slaughtered each year. We need them now, more than ever.”
Restoring Respect and Understanding
Slaughter is illegal in the United States, but still tens of thousands of horses are secretly transported to slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico each year. Why?
Quarter horses – the largest number killed each year are raced, rodeo-d and shown as money-generating commodities and discarded when no longer profitable.
Thoroughbreds are bred in high numbers to chase low odds Triple Crown dreams.
Draft and other horses are impregnated, confined and catheterized by pharmaceutical companies to make estrogen therapies for women culled from Pregnant Mare Urine.
Pressured by oil, gas and ranching interests, Mustangs are culled from our western lands by the U.S. government and secretly sent to slaughter.
Show horses and polo ponies become injured without provision to care for them for life and are discarded for the next horse to carry its owner to victories. Injuries keep these horses from performing so they are considered worthless. It’s cheaper to slaughter than to humanely euthanize.
People who take in horses to love and care for them but face financial hardship and often discard them from fear of running out of money long before they actually do.
The suburbanization of ranch lands.
The transformation of barns in wealthy communities into guest houses and tennis courts.
And especially in California, grazing lands succumbing to grapes, moving horses farther and farther to the edges of civilization.
Ironically it was horses, along with man, who built our civilization, hoof print by footprint.
At Flag Ranch, our mission is to tell our horses' stories and offer people the face-to-face experience of horses (and other animals) as sentient beings, worthy of our respect, consideration and care. Our aim, along with the work of many, many others in America and around the world, is to restore horses as the true partners they continue to be in human development – though now of a subtler kind – and as the important members of planet Earth that they’ve always been.
We also encourage you to support the work of other courageous organizations who advocate for our fellow species and Mother Earth.
