There are many animals in the world who are forced to live in restrictive conditions because they are used for a number of reasons, whether it’s animal research or food or medicine production. A critical ingredient in the manufacture of some human medications is PMU, the acronym for Pregnant Mare Urine.
While PMU is an important element in life-saving medications, the conditions under which horses are used to create the ingredient are far from ideal. Female horses are confined to small stalls for decades with machinery hooked up to them. They are repeatedly impregnated in order to harvest their urine. Their foals are either put to work next to their moms or they are sent to the slaughterhouse.
It’s against this backdrop that a former PMU mare was brought to The Duchess Sanctuary in Oregon, an operating unit of a partnership between The Fund For Animals and The Humane Society of the United States. The sanctuary looks after approximately 200 horses that have been mistreated, abused, neglected or used for research or livestock industrial purposes.
This former PMU mare experiencing unbridled freedom, in the video below, at the Duchess Sanctuary is wonderful to watch, especially as she experiences snow for the first time!
