In Maine, the State decides if they want to charge someone accused of animal cruelty with a crime or with a civil violation depending on the severity of the cruelty, amount of animals involved, and other factors. Unfortunately, the State has shown a history of treating equine cases as less than serious. Whether this is because of statewide staffing issues or a need to revise the statutes, it is their responsibility to fix it and our responsibility to push them to. 

This petition will be provided to the State of Maine Animal Welfare office to ensure they know the horse community in this state takes horse health seriously and will not allow investigations into horse welfare to be preemptively closed without ensuring safety of the animals and taking any needed action, and hopefully used to develop our state equine protection laws going forward.

Our state laws do not require show organizations to ensure the health of horses and they do not set additional standards for the conditions a horse may be in to show. Regardless, the real problem here is not the showing – it is the state’s investigation into these matters and the unwillingness to treat equine neglect as a true crime.

Facebook action only goes so far and will fizzle out eventually, but real action comes from contacting the state. Please be kind to those you reach out to as they are people too and this has been a terrible oversight for years by the state and entire horse community. All we can do going forward to help our horses is encourage proper protocols are in place and are used correctly and encourage the state to develop more protective laws.