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Shilo
Back in the early 1990s, horse slaughter was a prevalent issue in our nation and the Mexican-style rodeo practice of horse-tripping (chasing horses around an arena at a gallop and then lassoing their front legs to send them crashing head-first to the ground) were under legal debate in several states.
Both the rodeo and the slaughter issues culminated in parts of California and the debate heated to a boiling point. Major news media exposed both while activists introduced legislation to make them illegal.
But in the interim, every Tuesday morning, in fact, a double-decked livestock trailer would arrive at a notable kill-buyer's boarding stable and load it full of discarded horses slated for dinner tables in Europe and Japan. The animals endured a 30-hour trek to a foreign-owned horse slaughtering plant in Texas, often arriving injured, hungry, and exhausted (read my investigative report, The Texas Massacres).
One such hapless discard, a young dapple-grey Arabian gelding, was purchased from a Mexico dealer by this well-known horse trader in southern California, and was destined for a Tuesday morning truck. There wasn't anything wrong with him; there were just too many unwanted Arabians in circulation from years of careless breeding, and his flesh was worth more dead than alive.
Bearing the wounds of his experience in the horse-tripping Mexican rodeo, the gray Arab, like many others of his kind, languished in a mud- and manure-filled "kill pen" while awaiting transport to Texas. And that's when I found him, on a rainy Monday afternoon, less than a day away from his fear-filled journey to slaughter.
The kill plant would pay the kill buyer $800 for the Arab's flesh; I bought him for $850, making it more profitable for the horse trader to sell him to me. I named him Shilo, after the Neil Diamond song by the same title, about one's only dependable friend, and made him the promise I would always be his.
It turned out that Shilo would become in his lifetime a First-Place First-Level Dressage horse and serve as an Ambassador for other horses destined for slaughter; over the course of a few years, Shilo was directly responsible, by his flashy presence in the show ring, for the rescue of more than 60 equines from the same kill pen he'd been salvaged from. When onlookers learned of his story, they became determined to save a horse themselves.
Click on the smaller images below to see larger ones.
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| The
sun shone the day Shilo was rescued. |
Shilo
spends a lot of time taking me for walks. |
Shilo
begins to trust humans. |
Shilo,
showing his lightened coat, is ready to learn. |
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| Shilo
enters training with Kermit. |
Pam
takes Shilo into the show ring. |
Shilo
boasts his ribbons. |
Shilo
enjoying his newly found life. |
Over the years, both Mexican-style rodeos and horse slaughter have become illegal in California. Appearing on television, Shilo showed voters just why it was wrong to turn equines into hamburger and to slam them onto their faces for the fun of it. His gentle soul reminded the human race of the beauty and grace of horses everywhere.