Welcome to Adventures with Atticus. Meet Atticus.
Atticus isn’t just any horse. He is the horse I rescued.
Every year tens of thousands of horses are purchased for slaughter. While horse slaughter for human consumption has been illegal in the United States since 2006, and all horse slaughter houses in the U.S. have been closed since 2007, the international market for horse meat and meat products for other animal consumption is still very viable in Mexico and Canada. Horse meat buyers thrive off the low prices owners put on horses that are no longer deemed useful or affordable. The meat purchasers ship those horses across the border to be butchered and sold.
Atticus was a horse who found himself at auction and purchased by a kill pen buyer. Fortunately, he was bought buy an organization whose horses are filtered through the Peabody Kansas Horse Rescue Pen before going to the kill pen. The Peabody Kansas Horse Rescue Pen has a Facebook page where videos are shown of horses that can be saved. Each horse is featured in a video that includes its age, physical attributes, and price (the meat value). The horses are only “safe” at Peabody for a limited amount of time and cannot be saved once the deadline has passed. Atticus almost missed his deadline.
For a LONG time I have watched the videos of horses and ponies on the Peabody site and rejoiced each time one was marked “SAFE.” (Of course, I want to save them all.)
Recently, my family knew we would like another horse we could all ride. Hubby and I had been “shopping” a lot on equestrian sites and had test rode a few horses, but none fit exactly what we were looking for.
Enter Atticus.
