Linda competed as a professional trainer and instructor for over 25 years. She specialized in jumpers and eventing while training in multiple disciplines throughout the equine industry..

When we speak of animal welfare, it is a curiosity that horsemen in the United States are so unfocused, yet could be incredibly powerful as a group. Show people tend to only know their own skill path, rarely mixing with different disciplines. Performance-based trainers might never have much to do with Senior animals, who often get passed down the ranks and become “lawn ornaments.” Racing horses of all types often head off to slaughter if a home is not found for an injured animal.

But there is one certainty in the horse world: The Department of Agriculture wants all horse people to answer to them. They command the equine political scene through “Farming Votes.” They have strategically teamed up with groups like the American Quarter Horse Association and Paint Horse Breeders Association. Both make money if they can dispose of horses quick enough to breed new ones. They also oversee the Premarin industry (who makes out by killing off 45,000 foals annually, just to produce Premarin for Wyeth Aeyrst of Malvern, PA). And they oversee both racing plus the Amish, who depend upon quick disposal.

This political wheel grinds forward without listening to the voice of regular horse people...who are, in reality, the backbone of the system. But since these horsemen have never organized as a political group, they have little voice. That alone allows horse slaughter to

continue as rampant brutality, with local New Holland, Lancaster County, PA being the East Coast’s “epicenter.”