Bloomberg, Rappaport Host ASPCA Adoption Day at the Hampton Classic

 Horses made themselves the stars among the animals that the ASPCA brought to the 37th annual Hampton Classic for adoption on Monday.

Jill Rappaport, the popular “Today Show” reporter, and Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and a grand prix rider who is an ASPCA equine welfare ambassador, presented the horses to the crowd assembled at the .

Bloomberg climbed aboard one of the horses to demonstrate the 16-year-old mare’s training and tractability. Bloomberg had never sat on this horse before, and her horse had never been to a large show like the Hampton Classic before, but the horse performed like a veteran.

“This is such a great opportunity to get the word out — to the people competing here at the Hampton Classic and to the general public living in this area — about these horses," Bloomberg said. "To be able to showcase these horses at a show like this is a perfect fit, and I hope some people take these lovely horses home.”

“It’s such a wonderful cause. I don’t know of any other horse show that does this,” said Rappaport, who owns several horses. “Horses need to have a bigger home than a dog or a cat, but it takes the same size heart to adopt a horse as it does to adopt a dog or a cat.”

By late Monday, Valerie Angeli, the senior director of equine and special projects for the ASPCA, said that seven dogs and cats had been adopted and that adoption requests had been made on two of the horses. “The horses were never going to be adopted on the spot, and as the week progresses we always get more and more interest in all of our animals,” Angeli said.