Economy has horse owners abandoning animals - Arizona

In a bad economy, some horse owners who can't pay the bills are abandoning their animals to get rid of the responsibility of caring for them. Public officials and horse-rescue groups talk about animals left behind in places such as national forests, near horse-riding trails or just tied to a gate at someone's house. Some are keeping their horses but are having trouble with the high cost of maintaining and caring for them. It has been a problem since the economy turned sour, and the people who deal with it say it's not getting better. "It's a sad, sad situation," said Holly Marino, founder of Horse Rescue of North Scottsdale. Some people just take horses wherever they can and leave them. Some owners call the rescue agencies, which try to take in the animals. Rescue groups also can get horses that are seized by law enforcement in animal-abuse cases and from the state Department of Agriculture, which is in charge of handling stray or abandoned livestock. Horses taken by the department that are not claimed as strays go to auction...Way down at the end of the article they finally get around to the change in the law...Another factor in the horse surplus: The slaughter of horses has been banned in the United States since 2007. Rescue groups worry, though, that some horses sold at auction wind up in slaughterhouses in other countries...ArizonaRepublic