Horse
Depending on breed, management and environment, the modern domestic horse has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. Uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and, occasionally, beyond. The oldest verifiable record was "Old Billy", a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. In modern times, Sugar Puff, who had been listed in "Guinness World Records" as the world's oldest living pony, died in 2007 at age 56.
Horse welfare
In England, the horse welfare movement saw the emergence of its first great activist, Ada Cole, at the beginning of the century. Moved by the lot of British workhorses, exploited for their whole lives before being exported to Belgium to be slaughtered for their meat, she created the International League for the Protection of Horses in 1927. She successfully advocated for a ban on the export of live British horses for meat ten years later. The group she founded, since renamed World Horse Welfare, continues campaigning for the protection of horses worldwide. In 1947, the British Horse Society was founded with the protection of the horse (welfare) among its missions. However, the great figure of equine defense in the middle of the century was American Velma Bronn Johnston, called "Wild Horse Annie". Born in 1912, in 1950 she began campaigning to end the displacement and slaughter of mustangs and wild donkeys under pressure from settlers. According to her, her commitment arose from the day she discovered, on the road, a truck dripping with the blood of mustangs en route to the slaughterhouse. In 1959, her activist pushed the American government to issue a law that prohibited the slaughter of mustangs on state-owned land. Considering this victory to be insufficient, Velma Bronn Johnston managed to bring about the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act in 1971 by Richard Nixon, which bans any mistreatment of mustangs.