This is a message from actress Payton Christian, who regularly volunteers to help us rescue horses from the slaughter pipeline and has personally adopted numerous horses from us to live out their lives on her beautiful farm.
What does it mean to be loved? To be loved by a friend, by a mother, or by anyone?
That’s a question that many slaughter horses probably wouldn’t know the answer if they could be asked.
Maybe at one point they knew love, but now all they know is pain, fear, hunger and sadness.
Mowgli was scared of where he would end up next. When we first saw him at the slaughter sale he was thought to be only eight months old. After we had him vet checked and examined we learned he was three years old! How could he be that 0ld and still be so small?
Sadly, he is believed to have been a victim of a slaughter feedlot, a place where hundreds of horses are held and fed steroids to fatten them up so they will weight more once they are shipped across the border into Mexico or Canada for slaughter.
It was probably there he was exposed to steroids at a very young age, maybe even while he was still in his mother’s womb.
This caused him to have what we call Forever Foal Syndrome. He will never grow, he will never be rode and his bones will always be weak and fragile. This didn’t mean he couldn’t be loved by someone, and boy, did I become a sucker for this boy.
Now, he doesn’t even look like the same horse that we rescued at the auction. We can only hope to continue to save more horses like Mowgli from such a terrible fate, but we can’t do it without people like you supporting us.
In only two days we are going to the same auction where we rescued Mowgli, please help us save horses just like him, and give them the same chance that Mowgli had. Thank You! ~ Payton Christian
