Nobody Said Goodbye…. by Debbie Nelson

Posted on January 9, 2019

Debbie Nelson has been around horses her entire life and knows them intimately. Read her moving account written from the horse’s point of view. It’s time to slaughter the horseracing industry.

I was conceived to be a product for the horse racing industry. My mother and father were carefully picked to pass on their genes of racing industry success to me. My mother had no choice who she would be bred to. She was raped by my father while being restrained by the humans. When I was born I was taken away from my birth mother. I was to be suckled and raised by a nurse mare. She was also forcibly impregnated so as to have milk for me. If not rescued her biological foal was sadly killed. Miserably we learned to love one another. My mother was raped again so someone like me would be born. The cycle goes on and on.

I was separated from my foal herd at about 1 year old. I was loaded up in a scary truck to go to the yearling auction. You could see the sadness, fear, confusion, desperation and anxiety in my eyes! All you had do was look. I didn’t want to go into the dark rolling cave. The humans whipped me until I went in. The sale barn and arena were equally unnerving. I was put into a pen with other yearlings I didn’t know. They was a lot of biting and kicking. We were not with our herd. We were terrified. We had never been away from our home. One by one we were sent down a lane into a small arena. It was bright. There were a lot of noisy people in bleachers sitting around the arena. I didn’t know any of them. Where was the friendly human girl who fed and watched out for us? There was a lot of yelling. After all the commotion I was loaded into a different dark cave. Some of the youngsters were auctioned off to a creepy human with an old broken down mobile cave. We are prey animals if we can’t run away from the predator we must fight or die. The human almost always wins. Eventually we will be part of the final solution. We will be murdered.

Before we are sent to die we must toil in the horse racing factory. We are trained to run for the humans before our bodies are mature enough. Our bones aren’t even fused. The training and racing are so hard on us that multiple injuries is the rule not the occasional happening. Some of us even die while doing this harsh sport for the humans.

We are separated in boxes away from the other horses. The jockeys don’t care as we are just a paycheck to them. They beat us with sticks to run faster. I couldn’t run any faster. I was hurtfully beaten just the same. Our only friends are the kind grooms who take care of us. Our other friends are the Pony Horses which take us to the starting gate. They end up at the kill auction too.

When we can no longer run fast enough for the humans, we are loaded up in the cave again to go to the kill auction. This was my fate. No one at the training barn said goodbye. No one saw the sadness, fear, confusion, desperation and anxiety which was again in my eyes. I say kill because most horses at the auction were bought to be sent to Canada or Mexico to be slaughtered. Our bodies will become food for horse-eating countries like Japan, Italy ,Russia and France. Our skin is to become leather products like shoes and purses. This includes the stallion fathers, brood mare mothers, nurse mare care givers, their foals and the pony horses. We are loaded tightly in cattle or pig trucks which don’t fit our shape. I can’t even turn my neck and head let alone my body. Miles and miles ahead of me like this We travel like this with no rest, food or water 500 to 1500 miles. I’m so thirsty. If we are unlikely enough to survive we wait with horses we don’t know again. The fighting begins. Terror will do that. Then it’s my personal turn to walk down the chute of no return. I am to be slaughtered. I am at a plant set up for the slaughter of our friends in this holocaust, the cows. I fall 2 times as I go down the chute of death and almost fall over backwards. I’m panicked! There is no escape! I go into the kill box with another horse. She is shot before me and I have to watch. Then it’s my turn. Where is the rescue organization? Why are they going to do this to me? I committed no horrendous crime. All I did was not run fast enough. Capital Punishment by definition doesn’t apply to me. They are going to execute me! I’m shot. I didn’t die right away.

Ten thousand racehorses like me are sent to be slaughtered each year from the U.S. alone. That number doesn’t reflect the other horses who are part of this greedy industry. I knew some of them. They were my family/herd and only comfort in this nightmare.

There is no humane Slaughter! Slaughter in any form is murder! Stop the animal holocaust!