Sadly, the city’s first documented case of abandoned horses last week may well not be the last.

The combination of a weak economy, a glut of horses, higher feed prices and the demise of domestic slaughterhouses has led to increasing numbers of abandoned horses in some parts of the country over the past few years. Given Allen County’s vast rural space that houses numerous stables as well as many private farms, it was only a matter of time before it happened here.

“The problem is growing with the poor economy,” said Michelle Heitz, who owns Shadarobah Horse Rescue near Churubusco. “The worse the economy is getting, the more people are struggling to take care of their horses.”

The annual cost of boarding, feeding and properly caring for a horse in Allen County can easily exceed $5,000. Even for owners who keep horses on their property, the cost of caring for a horse for a year is more than $2,300, according to the Animal Welfare Council. In a 2006 report, the council said 45 percent of horse owners have an annual income of $25,000 to $75,000.

Unfortunately, when horse owners can no longer care for their animals, the options are few.

“Horses haven’t been selling for probably the last two or three years,” said Kirsten Saldivar, head trainer of Orchard Creek Stables, where the two horses found abandoned last week at Johnny Appleseed Farm were taken. “You can’t give them away.”

Rescue operations such as Shadarobah can help, but “a lot of them are totally full,” notes Dr. Robert Koontz, veterinarian at Conley & Koontz Equine Hospital in Columbia City. Indeed, such rescue operations are often hard-pressed to care for numerous horses, and the same economic forces leading some to abandonment aren’t helping the rescue stables’ reliance on generous donations and successful fundraisers.

Even when an owner decides the most humane action is to euthanize a horse, it’s expensive.

The Animal Welfare Council believes the closing of the nation’s last three horse slaughterhouses in 2007 under legislative and judicial pressure has increased the problem. “Experts said the closure of American plants would lead to an increase in abandoned and unwanted horses, putting a severe strain on the budgets of rescue facilities, sheriff’s departments and local governments. It did,” the council said in a 2010 report.

Granted, the Animal Welfare Council is not the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Its members are organizations affiliated with circuses, rodeos, the horse industry, entertainment and ranching, and it campaigned against efforts to close horse slaughterhouses. But it correctly notes that the U.S. horsemeat facilities were operated under Department of Agriculture standards, while thousands of horses are now being trucked to slaughterhouses in Mexico – without such standards – and Canada.

Lacking options, some owners simply neglect their horses, like the Larwill couple who had 13 horses that had to be rescued last year. In states such as Colorado, some horses are set free in the wilderness – where the domesticated animals do not often fare as well as they do in the movies.

Or they are dropped off in parks.

All of which can increase demands placed on organizations such as Fort Wayne Animal Care & Control, which caught the two horses in Johnny Appleseed Park and had them taken to a safe place, then had to euthanize a third horse hit in traffic Sunday.

Peggy Bender, the spokeswoman and education specialist for Animal Care & Control, asks that any local horse owner no longer able to care for their animal contact her agency at 427-1244 to explore options.

No horse should have to meet the fate of the one, apparently abandoned, that was struck by a car Sunday on Auburn Road.