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Edited on Sun Jan-17-10 12:29 PM by northernlights
and a big kleig light to shine on the darkness in this village to show the truth, please. Don is a big man with a big heart. For years he's taken 4-Hers to shows when they couldn't afford to go, helped friends in the middle of the night when their horses colicked, and he helped me save Algiers' life when I 1st moved up here 7 years ago and a local barn tried to kill him. Don's too proud to ask for help, and that may be why life is hitting him so hard right now.
I've been trying to get my last load of hay in and his truck is broken, so he can't help me pick it up right now. But he finally unloaded the whole story of how his life suddenly spun out of control, without warning. He's getting pushed to the brink and beyond, and needs all the support he can get. I apologize for the length of the story below, but I have come so close to this sort of thing myself, and I've witnessed similar things happen to other horse owners -- so I need to share it.
The *Front* story -- I recently heard at work that several horses had starved to death in my village. I looked up the newspaper story and discovered it was around the corner from me. 14 neglected horses, several dead. They hadn't starved but suffered some sort of neglect and apparently died from some mystery illness. But the story in the paper didn't hold up -- the man had built a barn on someone else's property. He was supposed to be leasing the land but "payment never happened." This supposedly kind hearted woman let him build a barn and stay there because she "just liked looking out at the horses." (Yet somehow hadn't noticed the horses starving or sick or dying in her view?) And the horses in the photo did not look starved *at all.* One looked thin, but without knowing the horse's age, couldn't really be sure. Old horses will look bony, especially as their bellies drop. The woman who owned the property wasn't charged with anything. The horse owner was charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty, but name not released pending investigation.
The *Back* story -- I learned this morning that it's Don's horses. The land he "leased" but didn't pay for was actually paid for with unpaid work at the woman's store that I *used* to (but never again will) frequent. He has known this woman for decades -- she rescues Maine Coon Cats and he's been on multiple rescue missions assisting her. He had been caring for a friend's horses, and that friend hadn't paid him for a while, so he has been supporting their horses out of pocket. When I brought in my earlier load of hay with him, he told me he was giving away as many of his horses as he could because he was getting overwhelmed. The only horses he was keeping were a couple of his originals, a filly he'd bred and raised and his dream 4 year old black percheron filly.
A friend of the store/land owner wanted the black percheron, but he explained she wasn't one up for grabs. And then at the store he saw some things he shouldn't have seen -- including dead cats in the store food freezer!!!!! And he also found drug paraphernalia for sale in her store -- around the corner from the high school and in a state where a pipe left in your car would net a drug arrest. And then one day shortly after, he arrived at the barn on her property and found his horses seriously ill. He worked with the wrong vet -- we don't have many options out here and the reason I say he picked the wrong vet is because she's the same one that nearly killed my Jakey last year :cry: He also said, out of the blue, that he almost feels like she was trying to keep his horse's sick. That was the *exact* same gut feeling I'd had last year with Jake -- that she tried to turn his issue into a chronic problem that she could milk. :grr:
He described the symptoms and immediately it occurred to me the horses may have been poisoned. Nothing is adding up.
So now he's on the verge of losing everything, he can't afford a lawyer and he's the target of an old-fashioned New England witch-hunt. The press is smearing him and spewing lies; his reputation is destroyed and former "friends" are afraid to be seen with him. The 4-H kids he used to help have turned on him (and in some cases are getting his horses). The place where he buys hay did step up and say he's one of their 2 best customers -- he was buying 2 round bales/week (that's 1,000 pounds of hay/week -- enough to feed 20-30 horses easily). He was arrested and charged with multiple counts of felony cruelty to animals and multiple counts of misdeameanor cruelty to animals. With his truck broken he can't do a lot of work, and without work he can't get the money to fix his truck. He's waiting for a long-term client, who just returned from a trip, and going to ask her if she can pay him in advance.
So please, any support you can send to Don he needs. What he's going through is my worst nightmare -- I've come so close to living this, and I witnessed in Massachusets when animal control *stole* somebody's perfectly well cared for show horses (worth $250K) while that woman was attending her husband's *funeral* and instead of taking them to the state facility *hid* them at private "volunteer" homes, wouldn't allow *her* vet to examine them (there was nothing wrong with them)!
I told him that's why I keep to myself and don't let anybody on my property. That's why I'm changing my vet care around so much...the horse vets up here are a complete nightmare. That's why I plan to keep my dog vet care separate from the horses from now on -- that way nobody comes inside my house, ever. We've had 2horse vets in a row commit suicide -- one shortly before I moved here and one a couple years later.
Myself, I'm feeling calm right now. I'm thinking I may front him the money to fix his truck. I told him he could come to my property any time; I'm not afraid to have him deliver hay or walk into my horses barn. He had 2 barns full of horses -- only the horses on this woman's property got sick. Poor guy was washing his arms and hands with straight clorox to keep from spreading anything...:cry:
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