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Before he left the Denver area Sunday night, John Caldwell thought that some of the horses in the trailer he was hauling were a bit suspect.

The truck driver from Wetumka, Okla., was doing a favor for a friend, whose truck transmission was out. Caldwell's mission was to haul 15 horses to Oklahoma. Some of the animals had places where their hide had been rubbed off, and they didn't appear to have been well-fed.

"I didn't know these horses were gonna be in this bad of shape," Caldwell, 23, said Monday morning.

He was stroking the neck of an 11-year-old gelding that was obviously in despair as it lay on the asphalt parking lot at the 24/7 Store off West Crawford Street in Salina.

That horse and another were euthanized by Stan O'Neil, a retired Salina veterinarian who was called to examine the horses. From information he gleaned from people in Colorado, Caldwell speculated the horses were used in guided hunting expeditions.

"They apparently had been used pretty hard," O'Neil said. "The two that went down probably were too thin for transport ... and probably shouldn't have been hauled too long of a distance. That's what got them in trouble."

The survivors were taken to Farmers & Ranchers Livestock, a livestock auction business at 1500 W. Old Highway 40, where they were unloaded, fed and watered.

Most of the remaining 13 horses were in good shape, O'Neil said.

"Some of them were less than desirable, but they weren't as thin as the two we had to put down," he said. "They all were up and eating."

One horse had a bandage on its back that was covered in duct tape.

"I didn't examine that horse," O'Neil said.

Three horses down

Caldwell said he was unaware of a problem until he exited Interstate Highway 70 and began driving south on Interstate Highway 135 on Monday morning. Other motorists began flashing their lights and honking, indicating something was wrong in the trailer.

"I pulled in here, just to make sure," Caldwell said.

He stopped at 6 a.m. and noticed three horses in the trailer were down. Those horses at the back of the trailer that could walk were led out.

The horse being comforted might have been dragged out of the trailer, O'Neil said.

"I don't think it was ever up and walking," he said.

Added to a number of scars on the horse's hide were fresh wounds, apparently from being stepped on in the trailer. The horse was bleeding from the mouth, and there was an area on his back where the hide had been rubbed clean.

"I'm a horse lover. You do not ride a horse until the skin shows on the backbone," said Chelsea Proctor, 18, of Wetumka. She accompanied Caldwell, her boyfriend, on the trip.

Laying down and bleeding

Gail Weir, manager of the 24/7 Store, called the Salina Police Department after a customer reported someone was hosing out a trailer on the truck stop parking lot.

"I came out and saw a horse laying down, bleeding," she said.

That was the first horse euthanized.

Caldwell and Proctor said they didn't know the name of the owner of the horses, and the friend Caldwell was doing the favor for could not be reached by phone.

"They were headed to Oklahoma for winter pasture," O'Neil said.

Two Salina police officers, a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper and an animal control officer were at the parking lot.

Prosecutor to get report

Animal control officer Amber Fishburn was completing a report Monday afternoon that will be given to Salina city prosecutor Jennifer Wyatt this morning, said Yvonne Gibbons, director of the Salina-Saline County Health Department.

She said Wyatt will decide if citations will be issued.

"There are certainly some concerns. We don't know if there was neglect on the part of the driver or neglect on the part of the owner, but certainly there are issues," Gibbons said.

The owner, whose name was unknown Monday by the health department, is from Arkansas, she said.

Gibbons said the horses will pasture for a while in Oklahoma, then continue on to Arkansas. O'Neil said someone was on the way to Farmers and Ranchers from Oklahoma to haul the horses away.

n Reporter Tim Unruh can be reached at 822-1419 or by e-mail at tunruh@salina.com.

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