Earlier this year I stopped by my neighbors' place to see their new foal. They run a small Quarter Horse operation and I like seeing the newborns. When I asked about the prices for horses, I heard this: "Lousy. If PETA hadn't closed down the killer plants, things would be better."

Ah, PETA. With their plastic shoes and video cameras, they are the people we love to hate. Gotta problem? Blame PETA. However, for the record, the Texas horse slaughter plants were closed by the Tarrant County District Attorney, a Republican, enforcing a decades-old law. Attributing the closures to PETA is like attributing the Defense of Marriage Act to the Taliban–sure, they liked the result, but they are hardly the ones who got it done. As long as members of the horse industry delude themselves into thinking that the slaughterhouses were closed by the animal rights movement, they will never understand why the plants closed.

So, who should get the credit–or blame, depending on one's perspective–for the closings? Start with the horse industry itself, and its heroic, romantic image of the horse. We do revel in that image, like a mare rolling in a thick patch of clover. (There. I just did it myself.) We sell horses with it. And supplements, tack, blankets, lessons, fly masks, feed, you name it. We use it to lobby Congress for subsidies and tax breaks. The image is everywhere: Horses as teachers of life's lessons to children; as friends and confidants to "tween" girls; as silent pals to roping boys; as companions into retirement; as gallant warriors and proud athletes. Name another animal that shares Olympic gold with its human.

Hollywood, too, gets some of the credit: Seabiscuit, The Black Stallion, Pilgrim, Soñador, The Pie, Flicka. Sure, the image can be fake; most stallions (and even some mares), are played by geldings. Stallion behavior in reality is rated R. Sometimes Hollywood plays it straight: when Seabiscuit is sent off on his career, that's a foal being separated from his actual mother, and they aren't acting. You may have seen a hundred actual weanings, but the scene is still effective and touching