DECISIONS ESCUE BUSINESS
New Holland’s look like the Four Seasons. We didn’t go there expecting to buy horses. We wanted to understand it and see it. When you see the suffering, how sick they are, how scared they are, how injured many are, and you know what is ahead for them, heartbreaking barely describes it.”
Pacino’s Happy Ending Pacino had been on that same path. When an Omega volun-
teer saddled the gelding at the kill buyer’s, it was clear he had been someone’s horse and had had a show ring career. Kelly bought him right then, keeping him from the trip to slaughter. “In quarantine before the auction, he was completely
scared, pacing his stall, screaming. He was probably taken from friends, and may have cut up his head from being tied in a big trailer with other horses,” describes Lori Eberly, equi- tation and hunter/jumper trainer at Diamond L Riding Acad- emy in Reinholds, Pennsylvania.
“Unlike a lot of
rescues, Omega will send their horses into train- ing. Pacino came to me. Any lesson program would love to have him. But he was such a trooper that someone might abuse his gener- osity. At his age, he shouldn’t do too much. So I adopted him. He can work for a little while and then retire,” she says. A couple of
months after arriv- ing at Diamond L, Pacino took
another trailer ride. This time he arrived at a show grounds, unloaded, looked at the arena, walked into the barn, and stepped right into his stall. “It was like he was saying, ‘well this is more like it.’ He must have been treated with kindness at some point in his life because he is so kind,” says Lori.
Recently, Pacino packed a ten-year-old around an equi-
tation clinic with an “R” judge. “You can put anyone on him and trust him. The older girls wish we had him ten years ago,” says Lori, coach for the Franklin and Marshall College Eques- trian IEA and IHSA teams. “He was very special in his day. When he came, he was thin, not terrible, but not the way I like my horses to look. He has that nice hooky Warmblood neck, well-shaped, not upside down. He had a short back, but he does have the old man back going on.” Often the Warmbloods that make their way to auction are not sound or have other serious problems. Often they are so thin that they look like gaunt Thoroughbreds.
Megan’s Rescues Megan Gaynes of Auction Horses Rescue was making her
rounds at Mike’s Auction in Mira Loma, California to see what was for sale, take photographs and record identifying information about the horses. She follows what she calls the trade routes, “tracking the underbelly of the horse trade.” After convincing them that she was not trying to shut them down, a number of California livestock auctions now allow her to both photograph and buy if she stays low key. “I put my cell phone away and attend like I’m any other
buyer. I try not to make it adversarial. I say I’m no different from them; I’m just weird and want the old and lame ones,” Megan says. She doesn’t pull up with a truck and trailer. She buys only a few. She photographs them all. She spends a lot of time hanging out and networking. “I was an entertainment reporter. I love collecting infor-
mation and making use of it. When I started out, I would see a lot of horses go through auction that had no record. They were sold or given away, and people had no clue what happened to them. I found a way I can help. A lot of people have found horses through our photos.” When Megan started out in 2011, she thought she would find these horses good homes with people who would care for them. “But funding is hard to come by,” she admits. “And
Opposite page, top: “Pacino” arrived at the Pennsylvania auction in rough shape with baling twine as his halter. Bottom: Harry deLeyer and his rescued Amish horse Snowman about 50 years ago, soon to be featured in the documentary Harry & Snowman. This page, top and bottom: Conformation and riding photos of Pacino at Diamond L Riding Academy where he soon became a favorite of all the young students.
Warmbloods Today 15
Photos by Lori Eberly
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