What if your city or town had only one restaurant? That one single restaurant only serves pizza. Okay, maybe once or twice a month they switch it up and have a spaghetti dinner night, but every other night, they only serve pizza. Pizza is a good choice, yes? A lot of people love pizza.

What if one day someone opened a restaurant that served mac and cheese. Just mac and cheese. Okay, maybe once in a while they have a sausage night, but still, it’s a mac and cheese restaurant. A lot of people love mac and cheese. Some people love mac and cheese AND pizza, just on different nights.

No one would say “Why have two restaurants? We already had one, now the mac and cheese place is taking money from the pizza place!” No one would say that because each restaurant serves a different population and fills a different need. The same can be said for grocery stores, clothing stores, – and animal rescues.

Some horse rescues, like Faith N Friends, take in owner surrenders. Others take in draft horses, like Percherons or Clydesdales. Some only take retired police horses. Some only take criminal neglect or abuse cases. Others are designed for just miniature equines. There are rescues that only take in retired thoroughbreds.

They all serve a need. Each of those rescues helps address the unwanted horse problem in the United States. They ALL do good things in the name of saving the horses.

There are an estimated 120,000 homeless horses in the United States each year. 200,000 if you include those held on federal land under programs such as the Bureau of Land Management. Many of those horses end up as neglect or abuse cases and either die, tragically, or are intercepted by law enforcement. Some are retired “workers” – racehorses, police horses, farm horses. Most, however, are homeless because their owners are either unable or unwilling to care for them anymore. These are “horses which are no longer wanted by their current owner because they are old, injured, sick, unmanageable, fail to meet their owner’s expectations (e.g., performance, color or breeding), or their owner can no longer afford them,” according to the Unwanted Horse Council, a program sponsored by the American Horse Council.

Those owners are often unable to care for their horses through no fault of their own. Financial troubles, aging, declining health – there are many reasons owners find themselves unable to keep their horse. All too often, those animals go to auction and are sold off to kill buyers who ship them across the borders to be processed for human consumption around the world. Market prices are pennies per pound.

These are horses who are usually healthy, sound, and perfectly able to give years more love and service to people who would love them.

There are an estimated one million families or people in the US who want and can afford to own one or more horses. There are plenty of loving families for each horse.

There are between 6000 and 10,000 horses in rescues right now. Placing those horses with those families should be easy enough. It is a lot easier when everyone works together. If every rescue worked with every other rescue to find homes for the horses, just imagine how much easier it would be. Remember the pizza restaurant way up there at the beginning? Imagine a customer saying to them, “Man, your pizza is good, but I really wanted mac and cheese tonight.” If the manager said, “We don’t have mac and cheese right now, but there’s a restaurant over on Main Street that does. And maybe we’ll have mac and cheese on Wednesday, you never know!” The customer gets mac and cheese and both restaurants have a happy consumer. And maybe on Wednesday, the customer gets mac and cheese at the pizza place.

When we work together, everyone wins. The horses find loving homes and a rescue frees up a spot for the next horse. And, little by little, we cut off the slaughter pipeline. And we rescue more horses from neglect and abuse. More horses give more people the love and companionship everyone is looking for. Everyone wins when it’s a team effort.