(hopeful music) (chain clanking) - My name is Kim Cannon, and I'm the founding director of the Pennsylvania Equine Rescue and Retirement Foundation.

We've been rescuing horses probably for the past ten years now.

Rescuing horses, there's definitely a need for it.

- [Announcer 1] Horse trailers rolled up right to the barn, where the animals allegedly in distress were housed.

The property, along 982 in Derry, familiar to humane officers.

- [Announcer 2] You can even see the ribs showing on some of the horses.

One of the horse also has cancer.

- [Kim] A lot of the horses end up in slaughter, and they end up going to Canada and Mexico.

We don't have meat slaughterhouses in the United States.

They were shut down a while ago.

Most of our horses are off the racetrack.

They come from the racing industry.

We're just finding out that there's a lot of overbreeding.

There's definitely a need to rescue, just give the horses a second chance.

And they're healthy.

Some do have injuries from the racetrack, or maybe they were a buggy horse at some time.

A lot of them come to us beat up.

It doesn't necessarily mean that they should be sent to slaughter.

The ones that come to us definitely deserve a second chance at life.

But if we find that they're unrideable, they stay here and they just live their life, the rest of their life.

(happy music) I found out that a lot of people love horses, but they've never been up close to one.

So we just find a lot of people connect with horses.

And it's just like connecting with animals, with dogs and cats.

It's good for the horses, and when we find out that people benefit from being around the horses, we just think, well maybe we're on to something here.

- We were here to seize four horses for neglect.

- Now they're finding out that there's more horses that are being starved to death.

They're starvation cases, and Penn was one of them.

- [Videographer] Penn and Penny have just arrived safe and sound, and we are going to witness them arriving at their beautiful forever home.

- This is Penn, he's a 15 year old standard bred.

He had a racing career for about six years.

He was a harness racer, and then he became a buggy horse.

And then he retired, he's now retired.

- In just a few minutes, I am going to be signing the animal abuse statue overhaul.

I'm gonna make that effective today.

Yes, go ahead and applaud, huh?

(applause) - Penn and Penny became the mascots for the Act 10, the equine part of the new law.

It now covers starvation and neglect.

- It updates our animal abuse statute and increases penalties for anyone found to be abusing or neglecting an animal.

- They sent pictures of Penn and Penny, like hey, these horses need help, and there's other horses that are like this.

Horses are falling into this gray area that they need help.

Humans are letting them down.

And you know, it's funny because horses are not really considered livestock anymore, they're pets.

And they're big pets, but they're part of the family.

(grain dumping) There might be five horse that need saved.

There's five horses and you only have enough money for two, so you have to decide which two, and that's tough.

That's tough.

You wish you could save them all.

That's probably the hard part.