Will Ending Horse Slaughter Create More "Unwanted" Horses?

The relationship between horse slaughter and reported cases of abuse and neglect - Horsetalk - equestrian features on training, horse care, equine breeding and more

The relationship between horse slaughter and reported cases of abuse and neglect

May 25, 2007

A study by John Holland

Article © 2007 This article may not be reproduced in any form without prior permission.

The "Unwanted Horse" theory

The "unwanted horse" theory is the single most frequently cited argument in support of horse slaughter in the United States. This theory contends that there are more horses produced in the United States each year than are needed for recreational, sport, and other non-slaughter purposes. The theory then contends that horse slaughter acts as a "relief valve" and that if it were not for this channel these unwanted horses would begin accumulating. The theory goes on to warn that these horses would be neglected and abused unless the government stepped in to rescue them.

As an argument in favor of horse slaughter, this theory has two distinct advantages. The first advantage is that at face value the theory seems very plausible, as the numbers of horses being slaughtered sound so large that it is hard to imagine how they might be absorbed if slaughter were ended.

The second great advantage is that the theory allows the person or organization using it to claim that by opposing a ban on horse slaughter, they are really doing what is best for the horses. This is particularly important for organizations such as the AQHA (American Quarter Horse Assoc.), AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Assoc.) and AAEP (American Assoc. of Equine Practitioners), who are expected to represent the best interests of the species, and for politicians who don't wish to lose the support of animal-friendly constituents. But is the theory supported by the evidence?

Looking Closer

The first contraindication to the unwanted horse theory is the realization that as large as the annual horse slaughter numbers appear, they represent only about 1% of the horse population in the United States. It is rare that a population of any kind cannot absorb such a small increase or decrease in supply. This is just the first of many bits of negative evidence.

One proponent of horse slaughter, Representative Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, has gone so far as to circulate a letter¹ to his colleagues in the House of Representatives actually projecting the number of surplus horses that will accumulate in the decade following an end to slaughter, and estimating the cost to the government of warehousing these horses to be $530 million by 2016. In making this prediction, Goodlatte was using the assumption of a constant rate of production of unwanted horses. This is the easiest version of the "unwanted horse theory" to dispel.

The graph "Horses Slaughtered by Year"² is a test case for the concept that there are a relatively constant number of unwanted horses produced each year. Had we made the assumption in 1989 that the number of horses killed that year were still going to be produced in future years (the black line), we would have experienced an almost continuous drop in slaughter for the next decade and we would have found that by the end of 2003 there were over three million surplus horses unaccounted for. Clearly these horses were simply absorbed into the population.

Under the theory, the only explanation for these missing "surplus horses" would be that the horse population as a whole had been declining during this period and that the number of surplus horses was not a constant, but rather a fixed percentage of the population. The fixed percentage argument is clearly more reasonable than the fixed number hypothesis.

A search of available population data shows that there is no one set of complete numbers, but Freeman³ took all the available studies and statistics and estimated that during this period horse populations were in fact rising at a 3 to 5% rate per year. If this were taken into account in the graph above, the horizontal black line should be rising across the chart to over 500,000 horses per year by the end of 2003 (3% per year compounded), and this would result in far more than 3 million "surplus" horses for the period.

There are indeed more horses in the population, but there has been no government welfare program for these horses, no cost to the taxpayers, and no flood of homeless horses. Again, even with the most conservative assumptions the theory of a constant source of unwanted horses is completely discredited.

Faced with this evidence, the proponents of the unwanted horse theory quickly replaced the static supply model with an adaptive model which holds that the rate of slaughter adapts to the number of unwanted horses and thus it will vary from year to year. This model neglects a more straight forward explanation for the drop in slaughter numbers shown above, which is that most of the original 12 horse slaughter houses in operation in 1989 closed due to lack of demand over the course of the 1990s. The dynamic model would also seem to be conveniently untestable except for the availability of some interesting data surrounding an event that occurred in 2002.

Testing the Dynamic Model

The dynamic model assumes that the slaughter industry is for the most part adjusting its slaughter rate to absorb the unwanted horses through some inverse version of the law of supply and demand. If this were true, then a sudden and significant drop in slaughter capacity would throw the balance out because the industry could not adjust immediately to the surplus of unwanted horses. As luck would have it, just such an event occurred on Easter Sunday of 2002 when the Cavel slaughter plant in DeKalb Illinois burned to the ground.

By the time of Cavel burning, only three slaughter plants were operating in the United States and the rate of slaughter was back on the increase. The three plants had slaughtered 56,332 horses in 2001, but with Cavel off line for eight months of 2002, that number decreased to 42,312. By 2003 the two remaining plants had stepped up production to take up some of the slack.

In the graph "Horses Slaughtered or Exported for Possible Slaughter" the numbers of horses exported to Canada, Mexico, and Japan have been added to the number slaughtered in the United States. This sum is shown in yellow on the top curve of the graph. This line represents all horses possibly slaughtered from the United States. Again, by assuming that all horses exported to these three countries were slaughtered we are making the most conservative assumption. In reality current statistics show that this assumption is quite accurate and over 90% of the horses exported to these countries typically do go to slaughter.

What makes the closing and reopening of Cavel interesting is that there are solid statistics on the number of abuse and neglect cases in Illinois around this period. The other element that makes for an ideal test is that the remaining slaughter capacity was then almost 1,000 miles away in Texas. This meant that the "unwanted" horses from the Illinois area would be less attractive to killer buyers because they would have to transport them either to Texas or over the borders to Canada or Mexico. Proponents of the theory have attempted to explain what happened after Cavel burned by claiming that the surplus horses from Illinois were probably sent to these places. This is not the case as the "Horses Slaughtered or Exported for Possible Slaughter"&sup4; clearly shows.

Assumptions

We have clearly established that the bulk of the horses that would have been slaughtered by Cavel in the period between its burning and reopening were not sent elsewhere for slaughter. It could reasonably be argued that the rate of slaughter of Illinois horses probably dropped nearly to zero after the burning. At the very least Illinois horses were much less likely to be slaughtered than those from states in closer proximity to Texas. However, the calculations that follow are based on the extremely conservative assumption that the horses slaughtered during this period continued to be drawn from Illinois at the same proportion they had been when Cavel was operating.

It is clear that between 2000 and 2001 the rate of slaughter was on the increase, and that had Cavel not burned it appears that this line representing horses slaughtered and exported would have continued upward to the 122,000 level it reached in 2005 when Cavel was back in full operation the whole year.

Therefore, any mechanism the plants might have for adjusting to the supply of unwanted horses clearly could not operate fast enough to keep over 20,000 horses from falling through the cracks in 2002, and a similar number in 2003. The lighter shaded area therefore represents horses that should have been surplus from this event according to the unwanted horse theory.

To study the effect of this disturbance in processing capacity on the rate of abuse and neglect it is useful to plot the abuse rate against the slaughter rate.

According to the unwanted horse theory one would not expect the effect of a loss of slaughter capacity to be immediate. Instead, this effect should grow as the unwanted horses accumulated. The first thing one notices about the above graph is that this clearly is not the case. Between 2000 and 2001, both slaughter and neglect were increasing. According to the unwanted horse theory, this would indicate that horses were either not being slaughtered in sufficient numbers (unwanted horses were accumulating), or that there was some additional causation for the increasing abuse and neglect. For the year in which Cavel burned, the rate of slaughter diminished, and abuse continued to rise at the same rate it had been increasing before the fire. To some extent this can be explained by the fact that not enough additional unwanted horses had accumulated to have an effect in eight months since the plant burned.

In this case, however, we would certainly expect abuse to have increased rapidly by the end of 2003, but instead of rising abruptly, the rate of abuse actually stopped increasing and began dropping slightly. These are simply visual observations that call the unwanted horse theory into question. The real question remains as to whether we can numerically show any confirmation of the theory that abuse and neglect should increase as unwanted horses accumulate.

The Search for the Factor

If the theory that horse slaughter relieves abuse and neglect were true, then we should be able to find a factor by which these two things were related in the window of time just discussed. Furthermore this factor should be negative. For example, if we found a factor of -2, then we could predict that if we increased horse slaughter by 1%, the abuse rate should drop by 2%. Conversely, if we decreased horse slaughter by 1%, abuse and neglect should increase by 2%.

Four formulas were used to attempt to find this magic factor that would quantify the abuse and neglect relationship. The first formula related each year's percentage change in abuse to the percentage change in slaughter for the previous year. This simple rule allows that the accumulation or reduction of unwanted horses will begin to at least have some effect by the next year. When this calculation is done for each year, and the five yearly factors are averaged, the result is a positive factor of 1.04. In other words, this factor predicts that if we increase slaughter by 1% in a given year, we can on average expect a 1.04% increase in abuse the next year. This clearly contradicts the unwanted horse theory.

The second formula used related the percentage change in abuse in any given year to the percentage change in slaughter in that same year. The five yearly factors were then averaged and the result was again a positive factor, but this time of 2.73. In other words, if we reduced slaughter by 1%, we could expect abuse to go down by 2.73%. This is again in contradiction to the theory.

A third formula was applied. This formula was based on the percent change of each year with respect to the base year of 2000. This formula also yielded a positive factor of 2.54! In all three cases the attempt to derive a relationship between changes in the rate of slaughter and changes in the rate of abuse yields a result in opposition to the theory that slaughter relieves abuse.

A fourth test was applied to the numbers based on the calculation of the approximate number of accumulated unslaughtered horses each year due to the drop in processing capacity. The slope of the resulting curve was not monotonic as would be predicted by the "unwanted horse" theory. In the year before the fire and before any horses accumulated, the abuse rate increased by the same magnitude as it did when the accumulation went from zero to an estimated 20,600 at the end of the year Cavel closed. Then, when in the next year the number of unslaughtered horses doubled to 41,000, the abuse rate actually dropped. As before, no meaningful relationship could be drawn from the data.

Conclusions

The theory that reducing horse slaughter increases abuse and neglect is clearly not supported by the data. On its face, the data would seem to make the case that slaughter has just the opposite effect on the number of cases of abuse and neglect. There may be some truth to this because the brokers and feedlot operators who deal in slaughter horses are not known for their stewardship of the animals (to be polite). The fact is, however, that all attempts to calculate a relationship between abuse and neglect generate widely disparate values year to year which indicate that there is probably no meaningful relationship at all, or that if it exists it is insignificant compared to other factors.

The reason this is true is undoubtedly multi-fold. As previously mentioned, the number of horses being slaughtered annually represents only 1% of the horse population, so their fate has little effect on the overall situation. Neglect is probably more dependent upon larger factors such as weather (forage and hay availability), and the state of the economy.

Additionally, since the slaughter industry processes only horses that are in good flesh, and generally under twelve years of age and since blind horses and horses that cannot support their weight on all four legs are banned from transport, it would seem that the horses being removed from the population through slaughter are not the ones being abused and probably not the ones at highest risk of abuse or neglect.

Finally, a market place is not an "open loop" system by nature. That is, the supply of a commodity does not remain unrelated to its demand. If there is a demand for horses of a certain type (e.g. "loose horses"), then the market will provide them. For a commodity whose supply is fundamentally unlimited, supply would be expected to follow demand and not the other way around as the "unwanted horse" theory proposes.

In short, the theory that horse slaughter has a beneficial effect on the rate of abuse and neglect is clearly disproved by the facts. For reputable institutions to continue to depend on this theory as a justification for supporting horse slaughter is at best unjustified and irresponsible.

John Holland is an industrial consultant in the field of intelligent automation and knowledge engineering. He is the author of three books with his most recent work being "Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots; Inside the Mind of an Intelligent Machine". He also holds numerous patents in robotics, fiber optics, and radio telemetry.

Mr. Holland is an advocate for horse welfare and humane treatment. In 2005 he received the annual "Heart and Soul" award from United Animal Nations for his volunteer work against horse slaughter. He lives with his wife Sheilah and their 10 horses in the mountains of Southwest Virginia.

References

1 Letter from Representatives Bob Goodlatte and Charles Stenholm to Colleagues, June 18, 2004.

2 United States Department of Agriculture statistics www.fas.usda.gov/ustrade/USTExFatus.asp?QI=

3 Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service Study, David W. Freeman Oklahoma Horse Industry Trends, Historic Estimates of Horse Numbers in US and OK. http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-2087/CR-3987web.pdf

4 United States Department of Agriculture statistics www.nass.usda.gov:8080/QuickStats/PullData_US Illinois Department of Agriculture statistics

30 Years Of Horses

This summer will mark a very special anniversary for me – my 30th year as a horse owner. For a big city kid like myself, who always thought owning a horse was a real Impossible Dream, this is quite an anniversary indeed.

I was one of those storied little girls who was born in love with horses. I always loved all animals, but horses… There was always something special – magical – about them that I could never put into words. Even now I can’t express the feeling, and I think that only others who are blessed – or cursed! – with the “horse gene” can ever fully understand. I loved horses so much in fact, that I deliberately stayed away from them because it was just too painful to see them and not be able to touch or interact with them. We lived in Dallas TX – and I never even had the opportunity to ride at all, much less anything more.

Finally, in 1977 – when I was working full time and had my own money – it occurred to me that I could at least check out the possibilities at some of the boarding stables in Dallas. And, as it turned out, I would be able – just barely – to afford to board a horse at a wonderful place – White Rock Stables - only about ten miles from my home.

Now, all I needed to do was find a horse suitable for a timid adult who was so inexperienced I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Fortunately for me, the owner of the stable, Tex Oddson Sr., had a horse that he thought would be perfect for me. I was dreaming of getting a Morgan, but given my total lack of experience, I ended up taking Tex up on his offer – a 16 year old very well bred black Quarter Horse named Sirron. He sold him to me for $500, and it was the best money I ever spent.

Even at sixteen, Sirron was worth a lot more than $500. In fact, he was priceless. He knew everything, and he was perfectly happy to teach it all to me. He was fearless on the trail, and he was willing to tackle things he’d never been asked to do before – like dressage and jumping. He was perfect, and how I adored him!


He’s not showing great jumping form in this shot, but neither am I. Besides we were only jumping one bale of hay.

Sirron’s health had always been perfect, and he acted and looked more like an eight year old than a sixteen year old. By all rights, we should have had ten years or even more together. In fact, we only had five.

I truly thought my heart would break when I lost Sirron. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I had no intention of giving up on horses. I would gladly have kept Sirron forever, but since that couldn’t be, I decided to go for that Morgan I’d always dreamed of having.

The Morgan is a small breed. There are probably more Quarter Horses in Texas than there are Morgans in the entire world. This being the case, you have a small base to choose from, and prices are rather high. Undaunted, I pursued my dream, and I found him. In just a few weeks, I found him in Ardmore, OK, just about 150 miles from home. His name was Runcheck Dear John, a beautiful flaxen dark chestnut. He was younger than I’d planned – just turned four. He had very little training – definitely not what I’d planned on. He also cost more than I’d planned on… But, the moment our eyes met, he and I both knew we were meant for each other. Hey, you can’t fight destiny.


A Competitive Trail Ride near the Brazos River in Texas.

I called him DJ, and we did everything together for 20 years. We went on trail rides, both Competitive and pleasure, and he was always perfect. He loved the trails so much he never wanted to quit. He’d walk right past the trailer and start out on another trail! Every trail rider around Texas and Oklahoma in the mid-80s knew DJ. People would come running up to my trailer when I pulled in shouting, “Hi, DJ!”

We also took semi-regular dressage lessons – weather permitting. DJ was quite good at dressage, even if he didn’t like it as well as trail riding. :o)

I boarded him at the same stable in Dallas for ten years. Then, I got married and a couple of years later – 1992 – my husband and I purchased some acreage in his native Indiana. We packed up DJ, the dogs and all our stuff and moved to our “farm” – 24 acres and it was all ours! Finally! My own land with DJ just outside the back door. Heaven!

Since horses, being herd animals, are much happier with another horse as a companion. Within a few months we found her. The neighbor who was cutting and bailing our hay for us had a champion cutting Quarter Horse stallion that had been bred to a Quarter Horse/pony mare, and he had a yearling filly for sale.

Once again, it was love at first sight. She was bay and cute as a bug – totally irresistible. She didn’t really have a name, so I named her – Petite Ami, DJ’s little friend. And a friend she was. DJ’s relationships with other horses were always problematic. I think something must have happened to him before I got him that made him mistrustful of horses he didn’t know well. He seemed to like mares though, which is why I got a mare instead of another gelding. It worked, and he and Ami shared many happy hours grazing and just hanging out together.


Ami the kid.

DJ and I took it a bit easier in the second decade of our partnership. We rode in local parades – he loved to strut his stuff – and went on day rides with the local saddle club. We spent a lot of time just tooling around our own property – which was a nice ride in itself. And, we spent a lot of time just hanging out together.

We hung out in Dallas too, but I always had to have him on a halter and lead. Here, he was free to come and go, and if he hung out with me it was because it was his choice to do so. We had been very close before, but here our relationship developed into something much more profound. I tried not to think about I would do when I lost him…

No living thing is immortal, not even my Mighty DJ. He died with his head in my arms in 2002, just a few weeks short of his 25th birthday and our 20th anniversary. He’s now resting peacefully in his beloved pasture.

Right or wrong, losing DJ brought me the most astounding pain I’ve ever suffered in my life. The emptiness was overwhelming; the knowledge that I’d never hear his nicker or sit on his broad back again was unbearable.

From my experience with Sirron, I knew the only way I could help myself was to start searching for another horse ASAP. Besides, Ami was missing her buddy. It was heartbreaking to watch her looking for him and hearing her calling for him day and night. I tried to comfort her, but she’s not the type of horse who bonds with humans that closely, and I couldn’t help her much.

From my long years with DJ, I knew I had to have another Morgan. Of course, I was then confronted with the same obstacles I encountered in 1982 – few to choose from and price. However, I did have a couple of tools I did not have in ’82 – the network of Morgan breeders and owners I’d developed over the years and the Internet.

I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, so I spent the nights surfing the Net for horses. I’m not sure how I happened to hit the link to Valley Stables in Michigan, but I did and there he was. His name was VS Golden Desperado – barn name Indy – and he was my horse. He was about the same age that DJ was when I got him. He had about the same amount of training – or lack thereof! He even cost the same. And, as it turned out, he also has a personality quite similar to DJ’s – only even more inquisitive and mischievous, if that’s possible. For the details of my early adventures with Indy, see the archives of this Journal, for it started with him.


Indy and Ami – Love at first sight! For ALL of us

What’s ahead? I have no idea. All I know is that Indy and Ami – and Sirron and DJ – have enriched my life in ways that I would never have imagined without them. Here’s to the next 30 years.


Welcome To My World

From thehorse.com

This is so depressing. I understand the controversy about horse slaughter despite the fact that I am positively opposed to it. But, the fact is that most people in this country are aghast at the thought of slaughtering our horses for food. It's the will of the majority, whether pro-slaughter advocates agree with it or not.

I will post more on the slaughter topic later.

Slaughter: Change to Texas Senate Bill would Steer Around Ban - TheHorse.com

Online News

Slaughter: Change to Texas Senate Bill would Steer Around Ban
by: The Associated Press
May 11 2007 Article # 9575

Article Tools


A change quietly tucked into a state Senate bill approved this week seeks to sidestep a 58-year-old Texas law preventing the slaughter of horses for consumption of their meat.

Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, inserted an amendment into a bill on the duties and regulations of the Texas Animal Health Commission. It said animals tested by the commission would be exempt from the part of the state agriculture code banning the sale of horse meat for human consumption.

Hegar contends allowing horse meat processing in Texas can keep animals from enduring a harsher fate of being abused, neglected or shipped to Mexico.

"We're really just kind of turning our back on the problem by saying, 'Well, if they're not processed here nothing happens to them anymore,' and that's not the case," he said Friday.

The Senate approved the bill in Austin on Wednesday, and it was sent to the House's agriculture and livestock committee. House members passed a similar bill in the House, but it does not include provisions on horse slaughter.

"That debate will continue throughout the session. We've got several weeks left," Hegar said. "We'll be able to have that discussion and probably still have it again probably next session and through the interim. Who knows when we'll have final conclusion on this issue."

Efforts to continue horse slaughter the United States suffered recent losses in the federal courts and in Congress.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court effectively shut down two Texas plants that slaughtered horses and exported the meat overseas--Dallas Crown Inc. in Kaufman and Beltex Corp. in Fort Worth. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned a lower court ruling that said a 1949 Texas law banning horse slaughter for the sale of meat for food was invalid.

A third plant run by Cavel International Inc. in DeKalb, Ill., is not affected by the ruling. The three facilities are foreign-owned.

The Texas Animal Health Commission tests thousands of horses for diseases each year. But most of those tested were not headed to the state's slaughter houses.

Safer Grass

This is Indy's pasture mate, Ami. She is a Quarter Horse/pony mix mare that I have had since 1992 when she was a yearling - see picture below. What a cutie!



Originally, she was DJ's pasture mate after we moved him from Dallas to here in Indiana. They were great buddies, and she grieved for him almost as much as I did when we lost him in 2002 at the age of 25.

Fortunately, she and Indy hit it off from the very beginning - 2002 - and she's doing great at the age of 14.



She's had more than her share of problems though. In the summer of '95 she developed laminitis, appearantly from grass. And that's the point of this post. We almost lost Ami, and even though she recovered, she suffered horrifying pain, and has had intermittent problems with bruised soles and abscesses ever since. We must be extremely careful in the spring, summer and fall to be sure Ami doesn't get much grass. One bite too much, and she will come up sore - again. Laminitis is nothing to fool with. It is still the number two killer of horses - after colic - and the number one crippler.



Ami is hardly the only horse that cannot tolerate unlimited grass. In fact, it seems to be the norm rather than the exception these days. It is especially common among ponies and the easy keeping breeds such as Morgans - which means I have to keep a close eye on Indy too.

But, but... aren't horses supposed to eat grass? Isn't that the food they evolved on and have been eating for millennia? Yes and no.

The natural food of the horse is grass - just not "modern" grass. The grass species that we have available these days were developed specifically to fatten beef cattle and to allow dairy cattle to produce more milk. They are very high in sugar and starch. While cattle can tolerate this forage much better than horses, there is still much doubt about how healthful it would be for them long term. Since most cattle, even dairy, have a productive lifespan of about five or six years, they can't be compared with horses which are expected to perform for thirty years or more.

The specific culprits in the grasses seem to be a class of sugars called "fructans," and the manner in which they ferment in the horse's gut. The research on all this is very new, and there is a great deal yet to be learned about why today's horses can't safely eat their natural food. Even forage specialists and equine nutritionists don't fully understand the problem. Some in fact don't even realize there is a problem.

If you own a chubby, easy keeper like Ami, or any pony, Morgan or other "easy keeper" breed, I urge you to click on the link in this title and visit Katy Watts' site safergrass.org. She is an agronomist who owns horses that founder on grass. Her research is ground breaking and offers critical information for those of us who want to best for our pudgy equine pals.

That link will also be permanently displayed in my Other Links of Interest area. Please check it out. The horse you save might be your own.

Who Says Good Help Is Hard To Find?

Maybe I'm just lucky, but there is never a shortage of good help in my barn.

Ok, Indy. Are you ready to start?


That's the way!


Oops! It's okay - we'll just start again.


Now you're gettin' it!


All right!


Let's carry it out of the stall.

Reward for a job well done!



I guess it's a good thing I do have such wonderful help. It's been a long winter. First, I kept getting some sort of infection that ran down the sides of my finger nails. Not only did it damage the nails, it was excruciatingly painful. I was fighting this all winter.

Just as that seemed to finally be coming under control, my indoor cat, Trilby, got overly excited upon seeing one of the barn cats through the window and bit me on the forearm. Now, I've been bitten by cats, dogs, horses and even a couple of cousins and had no problem. This time I ended up in the ER.

I was running a temp of 103 and my entire arm was bright red and hugely swollen. They finally let me go - with a promise to see my own doc first thing in the morning - after IV antibiotics, gallons of blood for tests, a tetanus booster and a prescription for an oral antibiotic.

My own doc gave me a shot of yet another powerful antibiotic and wanted me to come back the next day for a second shot. Well.....

Fortunately I recovered rapidly after all this, but my arm and hand were quite sore for several days.

Now, it's April and it's cold and snowing. I'm afraid to ask what else can go wrong...

One Picture...

Well, here we are, riding in the Aussie saddle. Notice how relaxed Indy looks, head low, playing with his bit. He was not looking this way in this previous saddles, believe me.

As always with a new saddle, I've been fiddling with the stirrup length. It always seems to take me forever to decide just where I want the stirrups on each individual saddle. Most of my height must be leg, because I ride with a longer stirrup than many people who are taller than I am. Still, I've shortened them one hole since this picture was taken, so we shall see.

I haven't ridden in several days because it's been raining and chilly, with a stiff East wind. Indy loves it, but I do not. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get a chance to test the stirrup length. At least the stirrups are very easy to adjust.

More details - and pictures - later.