NEWS & VIEWS Bits & Pieces continued from page 80 Keeping Assateague Horses Wild
up (but not up as much as forecasted), but that was off set by steep declines in Perryville.
Congressional Horse Caucus Update Congressmen Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) and
Brett Guthrie (R-KY) will be the new co- chairs of the Congressional Horse Caucus in the 112th Congress. T e Congressional Horse Caucus is a bi-
partisan group of Members of the House of Representatives formed to educate Members of Congress and their staff s about the impor- tance of the horse industry in the economic, agricultural, sporting, gaming, and recreational life of the nation. T e Caucus currently has 38 members. Cardoza, who represents California’s 18th
Congressional District, is a graduate of the University of Maryland. T e American Horse Council is urging all members of the horse community to encourage their Representatives to join the Congressional Horse Caucus.
Horsewoman Becomes State Dairy Princess
Renne Wilson was crowned Maryland Dairy
Princess this summer. T e teenager lives on her parents’ dairy farm in Parkton and is ac- tive in both Future Farmers of America and the Maryland 4-H in dairy and equine. She plans to have a career as a large animal vet tech and will attend Frederick Community College this fall.
T e Assateague wild horses have attracted millions of tourists over the years to the As- sateague Island National Seashore. T rough the years, these once bashful horses have be- come increasingly accustomed to people, so much so that they are now causing problems throughout the island. T e Washington Post re- cently reported that some horses have become more aggressive in their attempts to mooch food from tourists and campers. In June, park offi cials transferred a stallion to a horse rescue center after it head-butted a woman, causing a gash on her head. T is stal- lion had been harassing other visitors for food before this incident. Park offi cials have rolled out measures to reestablish boundaries between horses and humans. T ese measures include a full-time “pony
chaperone” and a $100 citation for willfully getting within 10 feet of a horse. Previously, there was only a fi ne for actually feeding or petting the horses.
Animal Kingdom Out for Season
Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom will be spending the rest of the 2011 reacing season recovering at the Fair Hill Training Center from a recent surgery. T e horse, trained by Graham Motion and owned by Team Valor International, came up lame after the Belmont Stakes. On June 30, Animal Kingdom had a small screw placed into the bone near his hock to help heal the fracture fi rst discovered right after the Belmont. Motion told T e Baltimore Sun that he hopes to have Animal Kingdom
NEWS & VIEWS Farm Bureau Bulletin continued from page 11
with horses. Our Save T e Horse Farms Campaign is an eff ort to reduce the regulatory burdens from state and county laws that threaten the viability of horse farms. “Our members are very proud of the eff orts horse farm owners have made to install best man- agement practices and work with their soil conservation districts to ensure that the pastures we maintain are eff ective fi lters for the nutrients that would otherwise enter our waterways. “Nutrient Management Plans have been a useful tool to educate horse farm owners and encourage them to become better stewards of their land. Most of us apply less nutrients to our pastures than NMP guidelines allow. “Some of the proposed changes to NMP guidelines, however, shift the document from one that encourages good land stewardship to one that applies expensive and onerous requirements on farms. We believe that if the changes are adopted as proposed, the percentage of horse farm owners who do nutrient management plans on horse farms will decline signifi cantly, creating an enforcement nightmare for MDA and a battle with landowners that could put other environ- mental programs at risk.” - Steuart Pittman, MHC president
“T ese regulations will force many Maryland horse farms to either close or move to another
state, which many have already done. Every horse farm of any size in central or western Mary- land has at least one dry creek, or a creek that is not available for navigation or trout stocking. In short, these minor wet areas have been Nature’s storm water management long before the words were created. “I hope our legislators will do whatever they can to stop, delay, and change these proposals, or a large part of Maryland’s history will be lost.” -Paul Ritchie, Frederick
82 | THE EQUIERY | AUGUST 2011
back to racing in time for the Dubai World Cup in March 2012.
Letters to the Editor
Horse Sezier Comment “In her column (Seizing 150 Horses? Isn’t
there a better way?, July 2011) Hope Holland focused on the seizure of more than 100 se- verely neglected and malnourished horses at a breeding farm in Centerville, MD, and asked, “What was the owner of a farm [referred to by her as a ‘factory’] that had so far been self- suffi cient to do?” T e obvious answer is to stop breeding more horses. “Over-breeding horses not only puts a fi nan- cial burden on breeders; it also puts thousands of homeless horses at risk of being sent to in- humane death at slaughter. In the same way that dog breeders who own puppy mills churn out thousands of dogs each year and add to the oversupply of dogs in this country, so are irre- sponsible horse breeders guilty of condemn- ing surplus animals to their deaths. T e cruel, predatory slaughter industry is fueled by zeal- ous breeders who—in search of profi ts—create more living beings than they can fi nd homes for. T en these magnifi cent creatures, bred for their beauty and strength, are shipped in dan- gerous, crowded trailers to endure brutal and terrifying deaths in slaughterhouses. “People choose to be horse breeders: A lit- ter of horses doesn’t emerge unexpectedly from under your porch in the spring. Each horse has an owner, and each owner has a responsibility to care for that animal. Maryland can fi nd a better way of dealing with this issue. Let’s start by holding breeders responsible for their ac- tions.”
-Keith Dane, director of Equine Protection, T e Humane Society of the United States
Sold! “I sold “Gemini” in one week thanks to the ad in the Equiery and found and bought “Pasop” a month later. I also won the recent PVDA Ride for Life County saddle auction- so I have had Pasop and myself measured for a new County Perfection Saddle. Special thanks to Gene Freeze and Gina Perilla for spending so much time with me to get the “perfect” fi tting. So.....I am going to place an ad in the Equiery for all the saddles that I have not sold or ridden in for the last few years-thinking that one of them would fi t my Grand Prix dream horse! Took awhile to fi nd him - and then of course none of them fi t! So keep your fi ngers crossed that the Equiery ads continue to work their magic! Hope to see you soon.” -Susan Carr Davis
800-244-9580 |
www.equiery.com
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