A Shifting of Horse Power : Economy: Recessionary belt-tightening and big expenses are forcing some owners to get rid of the pets they love.

Pam Hargesheimer began running classified ads for her show horse, Rainy, last June.

But after eights months, unable to get the $3,500 asking price, the San Diego County horse owner had no choice but to try to sell her 7-year-old thoroughbred gelding at an auction in Chino: “The way the whole economy is right now--and I’m raising children--I can’t afford to keep pouring feed down a horse that’s not being used.”

Although her horse generated a lot of interest, bidding never went above $500--a price low enough to put Rainy at risk of being sold to a slaughterhouse buyer.

“The bid was so low I took him out of the auction,” said Hargesheimer. “I’m not going to give the horse away, and I’m certainly not going to have him go to a ‘killer.’ ”

Hargesheimer’s dilemma is becoming more common as recessionary belt-tightening--combined with rising boarding, feed and other expenses--has caused many of Southern California’s horse owners to rein in their favorite hobby.

Some will do everything they can to trim expenses, from having their horses shod less often to cutting out horse shows that require expensive entry fees and transportation costs.

Others have no choice but to sell.

The problem is they’re doing so in a flooded horse market that has softened considerably since the mid-’80s; it’s a time in which a purebred Arabian that sold for $40,000 a few years ago may even sell today for only $1,500. As one industry observer says, “The bottom has basically fallen out of the horse market.”

Huntington Beach horse owner Kelley Jenkins couldn’t even get $1,000 for her quarter horse. To ensure it would get a good home, she gave it back to the breeding ranch where she bought it two years ago for $4,500.

“The people who are interested in horses just don’t have the money anymore,” she said. “The money they could spend on horses is going into their rent or their food bill.”

There are 5.25 million horses in the United States. California, with 389,000, was second only to Texas in the number of horses in 1990, according to the American Horse Council. Current figures for Southern California, where most non-rural homeowners board their horses in stables, are unavailable. But a 1980 equine census conducted by the California State Horseman’s Assn. showed 131,000 horses in Los Angeles County, 21,639 in Orange County and 31,000 in San Diego County.

The tight sellers’ market has made it more difficult for individual owners to sell their horses. So, when classified ads or word-of-mouth fail, an owner may be forced to sell the horse at auction, where it could end up in a slaughterhouse.

“In better economic times, people bought horses, bred horses, collected horses,” said Linda Moss of Sun Valley, a Hollywood sound editor who owns seven purebred Arabians.

“When the economy slows down, they start to disperse their herds. What I see is a lot of very nice, very youthful, show-quality horses going through sales and selling for $200, which is a (slaughterhouse) price,” she said. “It’s happened to all breeds.”

To the uninitiated--those who don’t know a saddle-bred from a thoroughbred--the idea of owning a horse conjures up visions of the moneyed elite: Someone for whom owning a horse is no less a financial burden than supporting a Mercedes or slipping off for a weekend in the Bahamas.

But a great many members of the horsey set are middle-class people for whom, as one first-time horse owner observed, “owning your own horse is such a total luxury, really.” Says Hargesheimer, office manager for a horse publication whose husband is a sales representative for a warehouse distributor: “For us, it’s the equivalent of having a car payment. Our sacrifice to have horses is we just drive old cars.”

Lately, however, Hargesheimer has had to “trim the herd” down to a handful of horses on the three-acre ranch in Valley Center where she and her husband Dean moved to from Fullerton two years ago.

“I think there’s a level of horse owners that’s really been unaffected by the recession: It’s a hobby, and they have the money to do it,” she said. “But I’m on a lower income, and what’s happened to me is I have had to trim the herd a little bit from just all the horses we loved and kept down to horses that really pay their way and that we use specifically.

“There’s no deadwood in our barn any more.”

“A lot of horses and horse owners are suffering,” agrees Moss. “The price of feed is expected to go up as much due to the drought as the recession. That’s going to heavily impact horse owners who are just squeezing by.”

John DeMarco, who runs a Burbank horse blanket laundry service, has noticed an increasing number of horses being padlocked in their stalls because the owners are behind on the boarding bills.

“It goes on all the time because the board is very expensive,” he said. “A lot of the horses are just being abandoned.”

Even under the best of circumstances, owning a horse is expensive.

There’s boarding, which can range from $150 to $400 a month. There’s shoeing every six to eight weeks ($45 to $75), inoculations every three months ($45), vitamin supplements ($15 a month) and feed supplements ($20 a month).

Then there’s horse training (anywhere from $150 to $700 a month), exercising fees (a minimum of $10 a day) and riding lessons ($25 to $35 an hour).

Those no longer able to afford their horses often turn first to running classified ads in horse publications. At Horseman’s News, where Hargesheimer works, she is finding “a lot of people are spending money to advertise their horses, and the horses just aren’t (selling).

“It seems the only horses that are selling are the ones that are very low dollar, that are ‘killer’ material, or the very high-priced, top-bid horses that aren’t affected by the recession.”

Some owners resort to giving their horses away.

Observes Grace Belcuore, founder of California Equine Retirement Foundation in Winchester in Riverside County: “The result of the recession on the supply and demand is that a lot of the breeding ranches are closing down. I recently received a call from someone who has 73 horses on that ranch that they’re trying to dispose of. I don’t even know how to help these people.”

Belcuore started her nonprofit foundation four years ago to allow thoroughbred racehorse owners to permanently retire their horses or retrain them. After rehabilitating the sometimes injured horses and giving them basic riding skills, Belcuore finds them new homes.

“I have had horses sitting here that are perfectly sound and ridable that I’ve had difficulty moving out,” said Belcuore. “I could have moved them out if I were to give them away or take next to nothing for them, but when you do that, there’s always the chance that that horse could end up at the ‘killer’s.’ ”

Like the California Equine Retirement Foundation, HorseAid, a nonprofit organization that rescues abused and neglected horses, has also been receiving calls over the past year from horse owners seeking homes for their horses.

In response, the Rancho Palos Verdes-based agency initiated an adopt-a-horse program last fall. It has since found homes for 289 horses, the majority from owners who can no longer afford them.

Co-founder Enzo Giobbe said he has noticed another disturbing trend over the past year: In an attempt to cash in on the inability of owners to sell their horses, some unethical slaughter-house buyers have placed horse-wanted ads in horse sellers’ publications stating that they will provide a good home for an unwanted horse.

“Those were very strong seven or eight months ago when the recession really hit hard,” said Giobbe. “We’ve mostly stopped those ads by making the editors aware of the problem.”

Lois Hunter of Rio Linda near Sacramento won a $2,000 judgment in small claims court against a woman who ran such an ad last fall. Hunter, who even had the woman sign a contract stating she would not sell the horse, later learned the horse was sold to a slaughterhouse buyer two days later for $350. Hunter managed, however, to buy the horse back from the rendering plant agent for $400.

The fact that perfectly sound and youthful horses are going to slaughterhouses has drawn increased attention from humane groups.

“The recession certainly adds an urgency to it, but we were aware of the high incidence of registered show animals going to slaughter well before that,” said Robin Lohnes, executive director of the American Horse Protection Assn.

Lohnes said one of the aims of her group is to educate the public and horse owners “that the killer buyers are out there, and unfortunately, they do have a quota to fill. One should not assume that by selling their horse at auction that it will be bought by a person like the seller and get a nice, caring, loving, humane home.”