A wonderful effort brings horses home to green fields in El Dorado, saved from slaughter.
An excerpt.
By luck and Grace, 17 horses are no longer slaughter-bound
By Cynthia Hubert - Bee Staff Writer Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, September 16, 2006
They were "surplus" horses, bays and paints and even an Arabian, and they had been sentenced to death.
Then Beth DeCaprio and her posse stepped in.
Now the 17 horses, bound for an Illinois slaughterhouse last week, are grazing and galloping at DeCaprio's nonprofit Grace Foundation ranch in El Dorado Hills.
It took a herculean community effort to rescue them, said DeCaprio, whose foundation pairs "special needs" children with abused and neglected animals. Now she is working on finding adoptive homes for the horses.
Their story, DeCaprio said, illustrates the importance of a piece of legislation making its way through Congress. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act would ban the practice of killing American horses and selling their meat to foreign countries. California and other states have outlawed horse slaughtering, but it remains legal in Texas and Illinois.
"The idea that horses are being slaughtered for human consumption is something that most people can't believe even goes on in this country," said Debra Basaldua, a Grace Foundation volunteer. "People are shocked when they hear about it."
The horses now at the Grace ranch, on 600 acres donated by developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, came within a whisper of going to the slaughterhouse.
Last week, DeCaprio got a call from a worker at a feedlot in Nevada who told her that a large group of healthy horses was destined to become meat. DeCaprio could buy the animals for $7,500, the amount they would fetch at a slaughterhouse in Illinois. But she needed to come up with the money fast and find a way to transport the animals to Northern California.
DeCaprio, Basaldua and other volunteers sprang into action. They made and distributed fliers. They got cooperation from a local Starbucks, which collected donations from customers. They held a raffle.
Volunteer Kaitlyn Fitzgerald, 15, e-mailed her friends and family members, and came up with $585. Another youngster held a yard sale and contributed $76. A third donated her baby-sitting money.
But as the deadline approached, the fundraising effort was short of its goal. That's when a celebrity of sorts stepped in. Dominique Plewes, daughter of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, called and said she wanted to make up the deficit.
DeCaprio then found someone willing to transport the animals by trailer to the Grace Foundation ranch.
"We paid the hauler in $1 bills that we received from Starbucks," she said. The horses arrived in two groups on Wednesday and Thursday.
"It was so amazing to see them, knowing that we saved them all," Fitzgerald said.
