SUGARCREEK: With his plastic stick, Leroy Baker swatted one wild-eyed horse after another into the heart of the Sugarcreek Horse & Tack Auction, a circle of sawdust amid a gallery of denim-clad, popcorn-munching buyers and gawkers.

With 300 to 400 horses available at the weekly Friday event with carnival overtones, each animal had a couple of seconds to capture the interest of a benevolent buyer.

Otherwise, they could be steaks on a plate.

Packed into ''kill pens'' were a few horses in good condition. Others appeared miserable. One had a fresh laceration of the eye. Mucus flooded from the nose of another. Ribs protruded and muscles sagged from apparent malnutrition and overwork. Tumors jutted out of thin and rutted coats. Bones were fused badly after untended injuries.

Baker, owner and horse-meat buyer, warned his crews early in the day that animal activists were coming and did little to hide his
displeasure.

The horses looked frightened, their eyes scanning for an escape route while Baker swatted them on their backs and rumps, his voice growing louder and sharper in annoyance over the constant presence of the activists.

A pair of them were seated in the front row near Baker. Annette Fisher, executive director of Ravenna's Happy Trails Farm Animal Sanctuary, and Lisa Gordon of Frog Pond Draft Horse Rescue of Cambridge, had $30,000 to spend and bought 25 horses before the day was done.

Baker recognized Gordon and complained she had accused him of beating the horses in a newspaper story. She denied doing so, but loudly complained that he does beat the horses.

She had sympathizers in the crowd.

''I don't think it's right. It's like someone beating a woman,'' said Jim Freeman of Zanesville, who came to buy some knives. ''A horse has a right to live his life without someone beating him.''

The next horse Baker swatted through was blind.

He raised his voice and said he would give any animal activist $50 to buy it.

Gordon happily cinched the deal.

Pintos, standardbreds, quarter horses and Belgians, Percherons and other draft horses, majestic in better days, had grown skinny, sick and lame. Throwaways with former lives as working horses, racehorses and pets, it all came down to Baker, his switch and the auction stand.

''This is sad. The horses are so thin and dirty,'' said Marie Keister, an animal advocate from Broadview Heights.

Baker, who could not be reached for an interview, has said he is performing a service by disposing of useless horses.

Anticipation

The date grew in import months before its arrival and was reverently referred to simply as May 9.

That's when animal advocates from Happy Trails and Frog Pond would join forces and liberate a number of majestic draft horses from the ''kill pens'' at Sugarcreek Auction — and ultimately turn them into pets.

They had acquired $30,000 in donations and planned to pay handsomely to keep the beasts from the hooks of the meat or ''killer buyers'' who routinely purchase horses at auctions and send them to equine slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada, said Fisher.

Meat buyers started shipping horses across the border after the three equine slaughterhouses in the U.S., which ''processed'' 300,000 horses annually, were shut down in separate court actions challenging the legality of the practice.

Keith Bane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society of the U.S., said about 100,000 horses are transported across American borders annually. The meat is shipped to Europe and Asia primarily for human consumption, where it is prized as a slightly sweet, tender, low-fat alternative to beef by thrill-seeking gourmands, said Bane.

The clash of wills is an undercurrent in the auction house.

''If they're going to save something, why not save good horses instead of cripples — horses that will do someone some good?'' said a farmer who declined to be identified.

''It all depends on how you look at the value of a life,'' said Fisher. ''I'd hate to be his grandmother.''

Reform attempted

Legislation that would shut down the meat buyers is currently before Congress. The American Horse Slaughter Act, H.R. 503/S. 311, would end the slaughter of American horses for human consumption and prohibit their export for slaughter in other countries. A similar attempt in the previous session of Congress failed.

''There has always been a market force in play that causes killer buyers to go to auctions and bid against people who want to purchase them for companion use,'' said Bane. ''That has probably intensified in the last few decades as activists have gone to auctions and bid on them. Often the killer buyers will be bidding against them . . . because there is a profit to be had.''

At the current rate of about 80 cents a pound, meat buyers can make as much as $1,920 off a 2,400-pound draft horse — less their purchase price. Rescuers are willing to pay what they must to buy the horses.

The competition forces up the cost for meat buyers.

''Many compassionate and animal-friendly people are unaware . . . that meat buyers continue to purchase them at auctions and now send them on even more horrific journeys,'' said Fisher. A video that her organization says depicts a load of horses being taken to slaughter is posted on her Web site at http://happytrailsfarm.org/artman/publish/article_193.shtml.

The video says that since the horses are headed for death, haulers see no point in feeding or watering them along their multiday journeys, often in extreme temperatures. The horses are routinely left to sit for hours in searing heat or freezing cold while paperwork is completed. Some are trampled, some die en route. Those who live are loaded onto more trucks for a long, hot trip to a slaughterhouse.

The buyers' side

Meat buyers maintain that they are performing a service by ridding the country of surplus horses. Fisher and Bane agree there are too many, due mostly to overbreeding.

''Slaughter is a way of culling the excess that are being bred,'' said Bane. ''We have seen a real crisis in the horse-owning public owing to the drought, the economy, the rising price of hay and feed and the high price of gas and the fact that croplands have been converted to ethanol (production). All of those combined have caused the lower rung of horse owners to struggle. Some, out of desperation, take them to auction not knowing what the outcome of those horses will be.''

On May 9, Fisher watched a steady procession of mothers and daughters, families, farmers, English and Amish, unload their steeds at the side gate to the auction house under a sign that says: ''The USDA prohibits nonambulatory animals from being marketed for slaughter.''

Even so, one woman was overheard saying she hoped her horse found a good home.

Quarter horses, bred for ranch work and show, and thoroughbreds are the No. 1 and 2 breeds, respectively, most slaughtered, said Bane.

The May 9 rescue required tremendous resources and months of planning. Fisher and 10 others rescued 25 horses, for which they initially paid $14,000. The balance of the donated $30,000 will be used to sustain them.

It's not enough just to buy the horses and save them from the butcher. Once procured, the horses must be moved to safety, cataloged, fed and watered, evaluated and treated by a vet, then settled into their new homes at Happy Trails and Frog Pond, where they will continue to need expert care to recover from profound injuries. Later, they will be adopted out to loving families as riding horses or pasture pals.

''We got this huge assortment, all ages, from completely healthy to a handful we may need to euthanize,'' said Fisher. ''We were able to pull all the drafts [out of the kill pens] and two donkeys and two standardbreds. One is mostly blind but is a candidate for corrective surgery.''

Days like May 9, and she's had many, leave her feeling drained.

''It's always a mix of emotions,'' she said. ''It makes me sad knowing the fate of a lot of the horses, knowing where they're going to end up. Some of the ones we brought out probably should be euthanized, a more humane end than being trampled to death.''