MANORVILLE

MONA T. KANCIPER scanned the pastures that ring her blue and white barn, now at close to capacity and crammed with four-legged creatures temporarily, and in some instances permanently, residing here for lack of anywhere else to go. As the hard-driving president of New York Horse Rescue, a nonprofit organization that had its origins in the rehabilitation of racetrack castoffs but now copes with all breeds in all manner of predicaments, she is more interested in rescuing horses than whispering to them. But, like most horse-lovers, she occasionally does that as well.

By chance, she met the liquid brown eye of a previously homeless, malnourished and unwanted Irish thoroughbred named Maple, plucked from a backyard shed on Long Island. His ribs poked out like bicycle spokes and his attitude verged on sour when she took him in. Hunger and loneliness had taken a toll. Trust issues? He had those, too.

“This is definitely a very bad time to be a horse,” Ms. Kanciper said, confirming the negative development  driven by panicky, cash-strapped owners and an unforgiving economy  that has uprooted Maple and an as-yet-unknown number of his species. Reports of a surge in abandoned or neglected horses; of overcrowded rescue, auction and retirement facilities; and of unwanted equines being fattened in feedlots before being shipped to slaughter in Mexico and in Canada have prompted the Unwanted Horse Coalition, an offshoot of the American Horse Council, to undertake a national survey on the problem.

According to Dr. Tom Lenz, a veterinarian who is the chairman of the coalition, although the elimination of domestic slaughterhouses has reduced the total number of horses killed, 100,000 to 150,000 are still exported for slaughter each year. “So we know they’re unwanted,” he said. “America needs a wake-up call about this issue. The general population has this love affair with the horse without realizing the costs and complications of owning horses in this economy.”