Nov 17, 2006 Todd Kunz Reports, KVOA News 4, Tucson

Some cold Canadian horses have found a new warmer home here in Southern Arizona.

They were headed for the slaughter house, but as News 4’s Todd Kunz shows us, some people in Southern Arizona wouldn’t let that happen.

“They’re one of God’s creatures too,” says Karen Wineinger as a horse whinnies in the background.

She loves horses and she says sometimes you just run across a cause that captures your heart.

“I had just heard about these PMU mares and I wanted to help out.”

The PMU mares came from a feedlot in Manitoba, where their urine is collected to make the hormone therapy replacement drug Premarin or Prempro.

Karen already has three of the PMU horses, and today, she is here adopting two more…one of them pregnant.

Thirty-six horses made the trip from Canada to Southern Arizona. Fifteen of them are staying here to be adopted out, and the rest of them made a trip on to California.

They were saved from the slaughter house by a rescue organization from Green Valley.

“I feel that what’s happening to horses and the slaughter of the horses in America is an atrocity and I feel like somebody needs to be a voice for them,” declares Karen Pomroy.

Two years ago, she started her non-profit organization called Equine Voices. They rescue horses from dire conditions and make it possible for them to find new homes.

“With this rescue, about a 155 horses.” That’s how many horses Karen and others that work with her have saved over the past two years.

Audrey Caprio is one of the helpers…the adoption coordinator.

“To have them be slaughtered is a travesty of justice. It’s terrible,” she says.

Meanwhile, Karen Wineinger is thankful for the adoption program. She says she is like a newly expectant mother.

“Actually I am. I’ve been more and more excited.”

All of the horses in Thursday’s shipment have already been adopted, but Equine Voices is hoping there will be enough interest to bring in another truckload at the end of the month.