Three Fillies, continued ...
A few weeks later, Dorothy learned that our friend Marcie
Dark was boarding her Quarterhorse, Dudley, at McCoy's. Dorothy
told Marcie, "Do you realize there is no barn, not even
a tree for shelter out there?" Marcie shrugged off the warning.
Dorothy and I agreed to try to persuade Marcie to move her
horse out of there before winter hit. Little did we know what
we would be getting into.
In the meantime we had new adventures. They began with my
plans to hold a pet auction to benefit a candidate for the State
House of Representatives. Hugh Formhals enjoyed driving a stagecoach
with the New Mexico Carriage Association. Add to this his Hispanic
good looks, waxed mustache, and conservative ideals, and being
a certified public accountant, he looked like he'd make a great
addition to the Legislature.
I figured my girls, who had halter broken Vashti and helped
gentle Kiri, could help tame another foal. Then we could sell
her at a profit to benefit Formhals' campaign.
Meanwhile, Mildred was researching where these orphan foals were
coming from. Someone she met at the State Fair had told her about
DC Livestock. It was located in the Rio Grande valley south of
Albuquerque. She'd seen an ad for some riding horses and foals
at that place.
Oct. 2, 1992, Virginia and I decided to check it out. We pulled
into a sandy parking lot faced on the south by a mobile home,
on the north by some trucks and stock trailers, and to the east
by a maze of welded pipe corrals.
I knocked on the door of the mobile home. A man with a white
felt cowboy hat answered. He introduced himself as Dennis Chavez.
It was our first, but certainly not the last, encounter.
"You want to buy a foal," he rubbed his chin. "I
don't have much today, but let's take a look." He led us
through a gate into the pipe corral area. I began to realize
what was before my eyes.
I had figured the McCoy operation was the worst I would ever
see. If I could stand the horror of her place, I figured I had
the emotional strength to stand what any horse dealer might show
me.
At DC Livestock there was quite a bit more than riding horses
and foals for sale. In those pipe corrals crowded the sick, the
wounded, the blind and crazy, the starved and ugly. Most, as
I later learned, awaited the haul to slaughter -- if they lived
until the cattle truck arrived.
More --->>
Horse with wounded leg at DC Livestock. Someone had wrapped
the wound with a rag and tied it with baling twine. Then the
wound swelled up so the twine cut into his flesh. The horse is
drenched with sweat and shaking in agony. He was scheduled for
a 12-hour ride without food or water in a double decker cattle
truck to the Bel-Tex slaughterhouse in Ft. Worth.
More --->>
