WELLINGTON - Keith Dane, director of equine protection of the Humane Society, traveled from Maryland to attend the memorial service of the 21 polo horses that died earlier this week and to find out answers.

"I came down to basically try to learn," he said. "We are the largest animal welfare organization in the country with over 10 million members. We get a lot of calls when these things happen. We wanted to come down to report back to our constituents. More importantly we want to make sure that this doesn't happen again."

Dane said he's never seen anything like what happened in Wellington before. Most equine sports are individual sports so while there have been cases of horses overdosing polo is unique in that it is a team sport.

"If it was going to kill one it was going to kill them all," he said.

Dane is calling on the sport to regulate the usage of any type of drugs.

"The fact that there is no prohibitions on the use of any drugs or performance enhancing concoctions, medications or whatever is of concern in this sport," he said. "There are rumors that it's been used in the past and continues to be used. So it seems to me that the polo association will need to look at whether or not they will need to implement some sort of testing program to ensure the public this is a safe sport and there is no concerns about animal welfare going on."