Hope for Horses: Diana & Tim Parsel Come to the Rescue in Animal Abuse Disaster

Diana Parsel says her two new stallions are skittish for a reason. “They haven’t had much human contact -- they’re nobody’s pets. It’s sad because they served mankind and now they’re just being dumped. Now it’s time for us to help them.”
The lack of human contact comes from what many horse-lovers consider to be a barbaric practice. Parsel’s stallions -- used as studs -- were rescued from a Canadian ranch involved in the collection of an estrogen substitute called Premarin (PREgnant MARe urINE) from the urine of pregnant mares (see sidebar).
“Eleven months of the year these horses are tied up in a little cell and left to stand there at ranches in Canada and North Dakota,” Parsel says. “If these ranches were anywhere near us there would be protests, and if doctors knew, more of them would be prescribing alternative drugs.
So many people have been horrified by what’s happened.”

CANCER CONNECTION
Over the July 24 weekend, Diana and her husband Tim made a 600-mile drive to Cincinnati to pick up the horses delivered from a ranch in Canada. The stallions are among thousands of horses being dumped in the wake of a medical discovery of a Premarin-cancer connection.
“Researchers found out that the drug they’ve been using to ease the pain of menopause has a link to cancer,” Parsel says. “So all of a sudden the drug companies said ‘we don’t need you anymore’ and all of the ranches are shutting down.”
A postal worker in Petoskey, Diana, 45, and her truck-driving husband Tim, 49, own an 80-acre horse farm on Murray Road in Charlevoix. They have a dozen horses, collected over the past 12 years.
In February, the couple obtained three stallions and a mare from a urine collection ranch. Then in May they started Hope for Hooves, an organization to rescue and adopt out abused horses.
“We decided to have a walk with the horses on the bike path in Petoskey and took pledges,” Parsel recalls. “We started in May and within a two-week period we were able to collect $1,500. People love what we’re doing and we can’t say enough to thank all of the people who’ve helped out.”
The Parsels care for their horses with a sense of love and respect the animals never encountered at their former ranches.
“The thing I like about our farm is we try to keep the horses in a herd environment which they like. They like to roam.”

RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIP
But there are challenges to working with the adopted horses which are half-wild and emotionally damaged.
“The reason we’re adopting more horses is because we want to adopt them out to the public,” she says. “But these horses are a challenge. The first step is to earn the horses’ trust and develop a respectful relationship with them.”
She adds that the Parsels have conducted clinics at their farm for would-be adopters featuring the advice of Jerry Eicker, a trainer from Helman who teaches both the horse and its new owner.
Her new horses are making progress towards trusting humans, but are still nervous. “They’re coming along. My husband has a very quiet voice and is very kind to animals, so they really respond to him.”
But time is running out for thousands of horses and their foals on the Premarin ranches. Many horses are sold for their meat, either as pet food or for human consumption. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an estimated 70,000 foals born on the ranches each year are sold at the age of four months to “kill buyers” who fatten them up as a meat delicacy for European and Japanese meat buyers.
“There are people adopting these horses all over the country,” Parsel notes. “We’re trying to get to the horses before the meat-buyers do because there are thousands of them just getting dumped.”

To make a donation to Hope for Hooves or to sponsor a horse, contact the organization: Care of Diana Parsel, P.O. Box 807, Petoskey, MI 49770.



The Premarin Controversy:
Following is an excerpt from a Sept. 1999 Northern Express story, “Horses & Hormones,” by Jane Louise Boursaw describing the horse-Premarin connection. Letters in the Express raged for months after this story was published...

“If you visited one of the 485 Pregnant Mare Urine (PMU) farms in North Dakota or Manitoba, you would find mares tied up so tightly in tiny stalls they can barely take a step. The mares have no bedding on their floors, but it wouldn’t matter if they did. They cannot comfortably lie down or even rest their head on the cold concrete floors.
The urine from these mares is being used to produce one of America’s best-known hormone replacement therapy drugs prescribed for post-menopausal women -- an estrogen substitute called Premarin (PREgnant MARe urINE), manufactured by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories.
The continuous standing on the concrete floors (sometimes in their own feces) causes the mares to have swollen legs, and many die as a result of the stress and treatment they are subjected to. Straps attached to the ceiling firmly hold a rubber cup onto the mares’ urethra to catch the precious urine, causing sores on their legs and lower bellies, and painful urinary tract infections. Many mares have puss oozing from sores that aren’t treated with antibiotics because it would contaminate their urine.
According to “Menopause Online” a web site of PETA, each mare is artificially inseminated, fitted with a rubber urine-collection bag, and chained in a stall so small she can’t lie down for the 11-month gestation period. She is rarely, if ever, taken out for exercise. She is also denied water to concentrate the estrogen in her urine. (Farmers are paid by Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories according to the strength of estrogen in the urine.) Two weeks after she foals, the mare is impregnated again. The foal, an inconvenient by-product of pregnancy, is usually sold for slaughter, as are the mares, once their usefulness is over.
About 75,000 mares are subjected to this treatment every year.”
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