She was a bay -- a dark brown thoroughbred. She had a shiny coat and new horseshoes, all signs that someone took good care of her.
But Saturday night, the 3- or 4-year-old mare was found cut in pieces along a rural roadside in Southwest Miami-Dade, a spokesman for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Animals said.
The mare was the latest horse slaughtered, possibly for her meat, in a rash of such killings this year in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
"It was a pretty brutal scene," said Richard Couto, a board of directors investigator with the SPCA. "I love horses, and going to a scene like that and seeing one in 10 to 15 pieces, it's difficult."
It was not known late Sunday whether any horses had been reported missing in South Florida.
Two neighbors contacted the SPCA when they came across the scene along Southwest 207th Avenue while taking their own horses for a pleasure ride. The remains were scattered across hundreds of feet, and the back legs of the horse were missing. Its organs were found in large plastic garbage bags, Couto said.
The number of horses killed since January now stands at 21, Couto said.
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