Video: Christmas Message from the World Horse Welfare Organization

World Horse Welfare (WHW) Chief Executive Roly Owers wraps up the year in this comprehensive look back at the charity's efforts to help horses around the world. WHW is the world's leading horses-only charity operating on both a national level in Great Britain and on the global stage representing ongoing interests in horse health and care.

Back home in Britain, WHW (formerly the International League for the Protection of Horses) operates as a leading resource for education of horse owners and has lead the way in campaigning for awareness of the ill effects of obesity in horses. WHW staffers are dedicated, highly educated in the specialty fields of horse welfare and health, and moving forward.

Directly or indirectly, we all benefit from organizations like WHW. The people there, and the people who donate to WHW programs, are at the top of my Christmas wishes list. While the stories I report on that involve WHW are not always easy or pleasant to write, I know that whenever I see their name involved, it is likely that the best and most knowledgeable minds in the horse world are working on this problem.

It's hard to ask for anything more, and we must never expect groups like WHW to just be there for us and our horses. We make them possible. And they, in turn, make us possible.

Merry Christmas to every horse and human who has benefited from or who is helping this wonderful organization. Go to www.worldhorsewelfare.org to donate whatever you can and be part of this important effort to help horses.

Video: Footage Released to Press, Public as Massive Horse Cruelty Trial Continues in England

This is the complete, straight footage from the RSPCA, without narration.
Warning: this may be too graphic for some people to view or comprehend.

This is the television network version, with narration.

I was saving this story for the end of the year. I would have labeled this the worst news story of the year.

The story comes from England, the country on the planet with some of the strictest provisions for horse welfare and some of the most enabled law enforcement agencies dedicated to horse advocacy.

But it wasn't enough. Last January, a horrific news story broke, with tales of unimaginable, disgusting conditions. Agencies worked together to rescue close to 100 horses and house them all over England, but for many, it was too late. By the time they hacked through the red tape to get onto the farm, many horses lay dead and decaying on the ground.

The case, the horses, the entire saga has been encapsulated into a single word in British horse minds: "Amersham". Say no more. Amersham is the town in Buckinghamshire where horse dealer James Gray warehoused horses.

The farm's owners are now on trial, and this week a London newspaper, The Sun, went to court to release video taken by the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) when the premises were entered. Yesterday a link was released to a video download site, which is normal for the press. I didn't dally, but by the time I got to the link, the maximum downloads (usually 500 or 1000) had been reached.

That gives you some idea of the intensity of this trial. It will be the horse cruelty event by which all others will be measured. The news report shown here is from the ITN network and shows the less sordid footage; the narrator also provides some background.

I don't know how long it will take to reach a verdict, but it's not always a foregone conclusion that the owners will be convicted.

Click here to go to a dedicated site with a press file documenting the unfolding of this case.

There are many things I don't understand about this case and, until now, I had not seen the video, which is deeply disturbing. The fact that so many of the horses have stable blankets on seems so incongruous with neglected, abandoned, starving horses. There are also many, many questions about previous investigations of the property.

World Horse Welfare Conference: Video Reports from Around the World

The World Horse Welfare annual conference took place on November 11, 2008, at the Royal Geographic Society in London, England.

Over 130 guests, including the charity's president Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal, heard from charity representatives about some of the key issues concerning horse welfare today and the work the charity is doing for horses around the world.

This video is a brief synopsis of the key speakers presentations, giving those who were unable to attend a snapshot of the day's reports.

You will see reports about horse welfare projects in Nicaragua and South Africa, learn more about equine obesity in pleasure horses in England, and hear an update on efforts to further reform conditions for horses being transported across Europe to slaughter. (Europe is years ahead of the USA on these reforms; we can learn a lot from what they have accomplished so far!)

Please go to the World Horse Welfare website to learn more about these programs and many more educational and political efforts of WHW on behalf of the world's horses.