Where we live you cant give a horse away. There is a guy though,who lives near, will picks up all the horses people are looking for 'good forever homes'. He promises he'll keep forever so he can get them free. Most have special needs, like bad teeth or just old. He dumps them out in a pasture with poor grass and if they survive long enough where he has enough for a trailer load, they are hauled 500 miles to Mexico. I've turned the guy in many times with risk of retaliation. He's a bad guy, very bad. There is nowhere these horses can go, no one wants them and he's glad to take them off your hands for free.. there are skeletons all over his pastures...so so sad
I would never ever take a horse to a sale right now. My aging drill team horse who looked 10 but was 24 had a lot of life left in her, was just getting older and once we quit the drill team i didnt ride her. Before slaughter was stopped and the market was good, i could have easily gotten 5000 for her, even at that age....I looked and looked around and found a therapy camp for handicapped children to donate her to. They tried her out and loved her. She's still there and still looks young.
The people who are the real problem are the ones who think they want a horse, but have never been able to afford one. Since you can get free horses now, these people take one. They then find out that even though the horse was free, keeping one isnt. They keep them and as they decide they are spending too much money on feed and need to get rid of the horse, they wait until the horse is already in bad shape. Thats where the guys like the one out here picks them up for free.
Its really sad what banning slaughter has done. Nothing has done more damage to the horse, than banning slaughter.