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Not since 1971—the introduction of the modern system of Eclipse Award voting—has a horse won three categories of awards—Horse of the Year, Older Male, and Male Turf Horse—two years in a row. Wise Dan did so by winning six of his seven starts on turf, carrying high weight in five races, and winning four Grade I races in 2013 at tracks across North America. He had a consistent season and was never scratched. In Horse of the Year voting he polled ten times the number of votes as his closest runner-up, Mucho Macho Man. The year before, after his 2012 season, Wise Dan became the first horse to win all three categories since John Henry in 1981. One of only six horses in modern history that have won consecutive Horse of the Year honors, Wise Dan joins Secretariat, Forego, Affirmed, Cigar, and Curlin in that accomplishment. Now seven years old, the chestnut gelding is by Wiseman’s ferry out of Lisa Danielle by Wolf Power. He was bred at home by owner Morton Fink in Kentucky and is trained by Charlie LoPresti near Lexington. His post-season rest over, Wise Dan is now gearing up for the 2014 season at Keeneland, his home base. Click for more details in Claire Novak’s article in Bloodhorse. Posted February 17, 2014

In what the Western Morning News calls a “game-changer,” the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) will soon be able to intensify its surveillance of foxhunting practices in England. An article by Martin Bell claims that The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) has financed the hiring and equipping of ex-armed forces personnel and covert surveillance specialists to replace the volunteers that have been monitoring hunting activities. The LACS believes that these professionals will be able to furnish the RCPCA with better evidence with which to prosecute foxhunters that do not hunt within the law. In his article, Bell removes all doubt—if any doubt ever existed—about what England’s Hunting Act is really about: class hatred. Supporting the role of the RSPCA in prosecuting animal abusers, Bell writes, “It should not make any difference whether the abuser is a crack-cocaine dealer with a maltreated dog in his council flat, or a land-owning toff with a double-barrelled name and a rural mansion who kills foxes illegally.” [Italics ours.] Bell scoffs at any hope that the Hunting Act might be repealed by Parliament. He points out that a recent petition by Members of Parliament to allow sheep farmers to flush a fox with a full pack fizzled out when only 40 out of 650 MPs signed it. Click for more details. Posted February 14, 2014

The Congress passed, and the President signed the new budget, effectively banning horse slaughter once again by cutting funding for USDA inspections at horse slaughter facilities. Congress did this very same thing in 2006, an action which effectively closed all horse processing plants in the country. Much has happened between then and now. In 2011, the highly respected General Accounting Office (GAO)—Congress’s own watchdog agency—reported bluntly to Congress that their funding cut and the resultant plant closures actually had the opposite effect from that intended. The GAO told Congress that horses were now traveling further (to Mexico and Canada) and in many cases were slaughtered under worse conditions than before, and that their legislation had harmed horse welfare. After receiving that report, in 2011 Congress reinstated the funding for USDA inspections, opening the door for a resumption of horse processing in this country. As a result of that action, the USDA recently gave approval for the opening of horse slaughter plants in New Mexico and Missouri. However, lawsuits filed by animal rights activists repeatedly delayed those openings. “Americans do not want to see scarce tax dollars used to oversee an inhumane, disreputable horse slaughter industry,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “We don’t have dog and cat slaughter plants in the U.S. catering to small markets overseas, and we shouldn’t have horse slaughter operations for that purpose, either.” HSUS and the Obama administration both lobbied to end horse slaughter in the U.S. Yet unsolved, however, is the issue of how to humanely cope with the more than 100,000 unwanted and abandoned horses that used to pass through those processing facilities each year. Click for more details. Posted January 15, 2014

Two days before New York Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio was to be sworn into office he vowed to eliminate the horse carriages that have for so long played a romantic role in Central Park. “It’s over,” he said. “We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City. They are not humane. They are not appropriate to the year 2014.” While de Blasio’s announcement has elicited opposition, it appears that he comes to power with sufficient votes in the City Council to eliminate the sound of horse’s hooves from the streets of New York for all time. “De Blasio has handed animal rights activists a major victory. Harry Bruinius, staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor writes, “Liberals have swept into office across the city, and now PETA is in, and top hats—which many hansom cab riders wear—are out.” Click for more details in the CSM report. Posted January 4, 2014

A district judge in New Mexico has delayed for ten days the planned operations of the nation’s first horse slaughter plant in seven years. On January 13, 2014, State District Judge Matthew Wilson will listen to testimony in a lawsuit brought by state Attorney General Gary King. King filed the lawsuit last month after a federal appeals court vacated a temporary restraining order blocking the openings. It seemed, momentarily, that the way was cleared—once again—for processing plants to reopen. Going back in time, that temporary restraining order was allowed in July after the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the go-ahead for resumption of the regulated slaughter of horses. This latest lawsuit by the New Mexico attorney general claims that the processor would violate the state’s food safety, water quality, and unfair business practices laws. The processor’s attorney argues that the state lacks jurisdiction because the meat would not be sold or consumed in the U.S., that the federal government has sole jurisdiction over meat shipped to international markets, and that the company is working with environmental officials to ensure lawful disposal of all waste. Click for more details in the Associated Press report by Jeri Clausing. Posted January 4, 2014

Horse slaughter plants in New Mexico and Missouri expect to resume processing again in the U.S. in a matter of days. “Expect” is the operating word in this ongoing battle between the opposing views. Horse slaughter plants expected to open back in July of this year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cleared the way, but a last-moment appeal spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) resulted in a temporary restraining order on the plant openings. That emergency ban has now been vacated by a federal appeals court, deciding that the humane organizations “failed to meet their burden” of proof that the injunction was necessary. The way is cleared once again for the plants to open. Most media news articles continue to approach this contentious issue from the horsemeat angle. The sensitivity of many in this country to the use of horses for human consumption is powerfully emotional, and such headlines sell newspapers. However, what the media mostly ignore in their coverage is that the Government Accounting Office (GAO), Congress’s independent investigative arm, bluntly reported to Congress in 2011, that horse welfare had been harmed by their legislation that resulted in the closing of all horse processing plants in this country. Prompted by animal rights groups, Congress, in 2006, passed a law which eliminated funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the inspection of horses in transit to slaughter and at slaughter facilities. Since existing law required USDA inspection, it was a back-door method of ending the slaughter of horses in the U.S. Within a year the last domestic slaughter house closed. At that time about 100,000 horses a year were being shipped to slaughter facilities. It was the ideological dream that these horses would somehow be absorbed by equine retirement facilities to spend the remainder of their natural lives in green fields tended by loving caretakers. That dream became a nightmare for horses. With retirement facilities unable to absorb even a small fraction of unwanted horses, the GAO reported that in 2010, 138,000 horses were exported to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. “The horses are traveling farther to meet the same end…in foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply,” said the GAO. The agency went on to say that horses are sometimes shipped in too small containers—conditions that were not allowed when USDA inspections applied. Not only have more horses been shipped greater distances under conditions unregulated by the USDA, to be slaughtered in facilities unregulated by the USDA for humane treatment, but thousands more horses are simply abandoned and neglected for lack of a commercial outlet that slaughter facilities used to provide. Horse slaughter may not be the best solution for the unwanted horse. Surely we must continue to pursue and develop all practical ideas that have come forward to solve the problem of unwanted horses in a kinder way. But the cessation of horse slaughter in the U.S. as the result of Congressional legislation has resulted in more suffering, not less, according to the GAO. Posted December 17, 2013

Hamilton Phillips Fox, ex-MFH, died at his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on November 26, 2013 at age 93. He was a decorated Naval veteran of World War II and enjoyed a distinguished law career in Salisbury, Maryland for nearly fifty years, starting in 1947. He served as MFH of the Wicomico Hunt (MD) for forty years, starting in 1964. Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Fox as a kind man who treated all people fairly both in his sporting and professional life. He served two terms as State’s Attorney between 1948 and 1956. Foxhunting was his favorite pastime. Mr. Fox enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and began his military service as an ensign. He commanded landing a craft ferrying tanks to the coast of Sicily in 1943. General Patton boarded his craft in Sicily to commend the crew for a job well done. Mr. Fox, who recalled hunting behind the general in Virginia as a teenager, talked foxhunting to Patton’s delight. On D-Day—arguably the most important single day of the twentieth century—Mr. Fox ferried troops and equipment to Omaha Beach in Normandy. He is mentioned in Stephen Ambrose’s definitive and best-selling history of that day, D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches.  Mr. Fox left the Navy as a First Lieutenant having won five battle stars. He was a graduate of Randolph Macon Military Academy and Washington and Lee University (1941). After the war ended, he graduated from the University of Maryland Law School in 1947. Click for more details in DelMarvaNow.com. Posted December 3, 2013