Christy Counts is changing the lives of horses through the Right Horse Initiative.

BY KITSON JAZYNKA

RHONDA SMITH

Nine years ago, national dog and cat advocate Christy Counts got her first horse.

“It was kind of an adult passion,” she says. Counts had always loved horses from a distance, but she’d never had the opportunity to have one of her own. Not long after she bought Chili, a young Friesian-Gypsy cross, her passion for horses inspired her to expand her animal-welfare work to include equines.

As president of both The WaterShed Animal Fund (a division of the Arnall Family Foundation) and the horse welfare group it funds, The Right Horse Initiative, Counts works for what she hopes will be lasting change that the entire horse world can support for at-risk horses in the United States. Her goal is to improve horse welfare on a scale similar to companion animal welfare.