I was raised as an Air Force brat and spent lots of time in Bermuda. I wasn't raised with cattle or horses and didn't know much about them. Now I've been with my husband for 18 years and I've seen things that can curl your toes.

When I was dating my husband, the Bureau of Land Management took over the wild horses, and over the years the horses have deteriorated. The BLM rounded up horses and transplanted them in different locations and the horses starved because they didn't know where the winter feed was or where to get water.

I've watched over the years as the wild horses become so inbred that they are no longer the proud animals they once were. Ranchers used to take care of them, weed out the garbage and restock. Wild horses helped make the ranches here in the West.

Ranchers would sell worthless horses to the slaughterhouse to help pay for the little extras to get through the winter months. The ranchers would gather a few of the wild horses to train and use on the ranch. But now that is against the law.

BLM has the control and I feel it has ruined the wild horses. The horses have become desert rats, with heads too big for their body and the minds of ants. They're pretty much untrainable, with a few exceptions.

When horses are brought to our house or we purchase them at auction, we treat them with kindness. They have all the food they can eat and we look through them to see if there are any that can be saved. If the horse is sound (not crippled) and broke to ride, we try to sell it. Or if it bucks, we try to see if it would be suitable for a rodeo.

People think that is cruel, but it's not. In my next life I want to come back as a bucking horse, because all I would have to do is buck for eight seconds maybe twice a week and then I could eat for the rest of the time. Now that is what I call easy living.

Horses buck because they like to buck, not because someone forced them. It's like you're either ticklish or you're not. The flank strap tickles them.

We have many different outlets for horses, but there are always some that can't be saved.

Some of the horses that come to our house are old or crippled and are suffering. Some say "euthanize them," but that costs money.

Buying a horse is the cheapest thing in owning a horse. It's keeping the horse that costs a lot. California banned selling horses for slaughter a couple of years ago. The result is that, because people can't afford to have a horse euthanized, they turn domestic horses out on the desert to fend for themselves and they starve to death. Or the owners leave them tied up at auctions in the middle of the night, because they can't afford to have a vet fix them or to have them euthanized and then taken to the landfill.

Banning slaughterhouses has really hurt the horse industry and horses. People won't take a chance on rescuing a horse because if the horse doesn't work for them, they are stuck with it. On the other hand, if they knew that they could get some of their money back by selling it to a slaughter-horse buyer if the horse was untrainable, they might try it.

The slaughtered horses are used for human consumption in Europe. We don't eat horse meat, but who are we to judge what is right for their society? We eat corn on the cob, but if you were to serve corn at the dinner table in certain other countries you would offend people there because, to them, corn is for the pigs.

So when the BLM gathers wild horses for adoption, who will take a chance on one? And when people don't adopt, what will the BLM do with all those wild horses? Dump them back out in the desert in a different place from where they were born so they can starve to death or suffer through the winter? Is that humane? To me that is cruelty in the first degree.

It's painful to watch a horse die of natural causes. Some of the older ones are lucky, have a heart attack and die suddenly. But a lot of the older horses don't die that easily. They lie out in the pasture for three or more weeks and starve to death.

Again some say "euthanize them," but some owners don't notice they are dying in time or they can't afford it. Some horses get hurt or sick. Most people who try and save crippled or sick horses get huge vet bills for their trouble.

The first time my husband and I shipped a load of horses, I cried. Not because of where the horses were going, but because of why they were going and how some of them had suffered for so long. Some were so crippled that you could see the pain in their eyes. And others were so mean that they would hurt people. A lot of those horses should have been on the truck long before.

The Senate didn't listen to people who have horses; they only listened to people who don't have any knowledge about this. They just looked at the surface and said they are right. But they are dead wrong.

I hope this doesn't pass the House, because if it does it will make us into outlaws. And the West will be overrun by inbred wild horses, many of which would be better off dead.

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Dennis K. Kunz and Donna Kunz live in Willard, Box Elder County.