Drive the highways and byways of the Town of Crawford and its neighbors and your eye will be drawn to the scenic beauty of the area. There's the Shawangunk ridgeline, which dominates everything, the open spaces, the fields and long lawns, and grazing in those fields, the horses. There are horses all over the place.

Orange County is horse country, and it has been that way for a long time. Goshen is not only the center of the county, but also of the trotting side of horse racing. There are probably more horses in the county today than ever, and in 2005, there were said to be at least 8,500 with a total value of $113,250,000. Orange County was only topped in the horse ownership league by Saratoga and Dutchess counties.

Owning and riding a horse is one of the great pleasures available to those who live in the countryside. The horse is a spectacularly beautiful animal, with a spirit that has made them special to humans for thousands of years.

Since the advent of the automobile, we have stopped using horses for routine transportation, saving them a lot of grief and agony. However, our love affair with the horse continues, which is why you can see so many of them grazing across the green fields of Pine Bush.

But behind the love affair, there are the details. Keeping a horse is expensive. Debra Corr of Exclusively Equine Properties says, "It will run you $25 to $30 a day. That's for feed, vet bills, boarding."

"The cost of hay and grain has gone up enormously," says Coleen Segarra, of the Equine Rescue Resource, based just outside Pine Bush. "Hay is now $5 and more a bale, and grain feeds are up around $15 a bag."

A horse will eat half a bale of hay a day, around 20 to 25 pounds. Of course, different breeds of horses have different needs.

"Thoroughbreds are race horses," says Libby Corben, horse transportation expert, who does just about everything for horses here in Orange County. "They burn hot, and they need much more grain than do the big draft horses. Those guys can get by mostly on hay."

On top of feed, there are Farrier bills for putting horse shoes on your horse. Not every horse has to have them, of course.

"If the horse is just staying on grass and in the stall, then it won't need shoes," Corben explains. "But for trail riding, or riding on a hard surface, they will, and it can cost you $150 to have them shoed 'all the way around.'"

Then there are your vet bills.

"Just having the vet come over and deal with a colic problem can run to $300 before it's over," says Corben.

If it means surgery, then it means several thousand dollars. Unlike most vets these days, the horse vet travels to visit the patient. But if surgery is necessary, the horse may have to be transported, and in a hurry, to a veterinary hospital.

"There are expenses," says Debra Corr, "but there are lots of folks who don't have big incomes, who do keep a horse. It can be done, but you have to be careful, and you have to know what you're doing. If you keep the horse on your own property, then you don't have the cost of boarding it. If you have some land for it to graze on, then you can reduce the feed costs, at least in the summer."

But with tough economic times, and winter, comes the season when people give up on their horses. That's when Coleen Segarra gets the phone calls.

"We are a rescue organization. The biggest load comes in the fall. People who've been struggling to keep their horses give up when winter looms. And this year, with the economic slowdown there's more of a problem than usual."

At Equine Resource and Recovery, rescue horses roam the paddocks, while Casey the Mini-Horse (a breed, not a pony) comes out for a photo-shoot, which he takes as an opportunity to hit up on the salad bar growing fresh along the drive.

"Right now I know of three thoroughbreds in Sullivan that need a home, and there are more in Ulster County," says Coleen Segarra. "We're facing a crisis as people who took on a horse find that now they can't afford it."

Some rescue operations are worse than others. Segarra has seen just about everything by this point.

"Once we took seventeen horses from one owner. They were starved and in poor condition. When we get them back into better shape we look for homes for them."

Equine Rescue Resource is always looking for volunteers, and for people who want to take a rescued horse. Their number is 744-1728.

At the other end of the spectrum is Debra Corr, who specializes in selling horse farms.

"The key thing to remember is that horses don't go to school. Horse people are major contributors to the local economy. They buy hay, they use the services of vets and farriers, they pay into the economy, but they don't impose costs on the economy."

Corr is passionate about keeping open space, which means keeping developers at bay.

"We've sold 26 horse farms now. So those are farms that haven't been chopped up into sub-divisions. They maintain open space. In my view, the best use for farmland is for farms."

As for the Town of Crawford and its horses, Corr wishes the taxes were a little less steep. "Crawford taxes are high. To keep that open space, the town needs to be friendlier to farmers. That's our view."

And as we drive by another pair of horses grazing in a field, we have to hope that can be done, because the horses are as much a part of the beauty of our area as anything else.

COMMENTS about this article (0)