A tough time for horses

The number of abused and abandoned horses is growing in Sonoma County, and local officials say the poor economy is partly to blame.

Bob Garcia, Sonoma County’s veteran animal control officer, said he’s seen this trend before: When tough economic times hit, horses are neglected.

“It just costs a lot of money now to feed a horse . . . We saw more horses abandoned last year than in the year prior to that. It seems like there’s a trend in that direction, which is concerning everyone.”

There were 18,000 horses in Sonoma County in 2005 according to the most recent survey of the population conducted by Sonoma State University. That was up from 14,000 horses in 1998.

Grant Miller, a veterinarian contracted to provide medical services to horses seized by the county, said in 2006 there were only three abuse cases requiring horses to be taken from properties. That number jumped to 30 in 2007. And 2008 opened with two more cases, which head to court this week.

Garcia said the last time he saw a spike in neglect and abandonment cases was during the mid-1990s when the county seized close to 50 horses during a period of only a few years.

In November, two Santa Rosa men, Monico Monarrez Mijarez, 40, and Jose Valencia Galvez, 49, were arrested on felony animal cruelty charges after two horses, a skinny Arabian and a 9-year-old thoroughbred, were seized during a raid on a Stony Point Road property.

Mijarez also was charged with misdemeanor animal abandonment for allegedly tying an aged black gelding to a barbed wire fence in southwest Santa Rosa last summer. The horse, which endured 100-degree weather without food and water, was so emaciated it had to be destroyed.

Mijarez and Galvez are scheduled to be in Sonoma County Superior Court today and Wednesday to answer to the charges.

It is unclear whether the cost of keeping horses had anything to do with the alleged failure of Mijarez and Galvez to care for the horses. But local officials said the cost of grain, boarding and other expenses puts horses at risk.

“The same money that buys a Porsche or yacht buys a horse — it’s discretionary money,” said Miller. “But horses still require care, whether you have money in the bank or not.”

Horse lovers involved in the rescue of ailing animals said the problem is revealed in the number of horses they are called on to help.

“When I first started eight years ago, I was maxed out at maybe seven horses,” said Santa Rosa resident Betsy Bueno, who runs Lost Hearts and Souls Horse Rescue. “A few years down the road, I averaged around nine or 10, and now I’m over 15, and I have to turn horses away.”

Miller and Bueno also point to the elimination of horse slaughter facilities in the United States as a cause of more abuse. It eliminates one avenue for dealing with an unwanted horse that now may be abandoned and left to suffer.

It’s a position animal rights advocates reject.

According to the Humane Society of the United States, there are an estimated 9 million horses in the United States, said Nancy Perry, the Humane Society’s vice president of government affairs. The number of horses slaughtered in U.S. plants totaled 141,949 in 2006.

That number dropped to 109,692 in 2007.

Last year, the Humane Society won several court battles that forced the closure of the country’s last three horse slaughter facilities — two in Texas and one in Illinois.

But Perry said there’s no evidence that the elimination of horse slaughter in the United States has led to an increase in the number of horses being neglected or abandoned.

Capt. Cindy Machado, animal services director for the Marin Humane Society, said that caring for a horse properly is an expensive undertaking.

“Even 10 years ago, if we impounded groups of horses on a cruelty case, we would have people lined up to adopt them,” said Machado. Now the cost makes it more difficult.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com.