The faces of neglect

Wee Bit Special on the day he arrived at Circle E Ranch.
Photo: Gayle England

On January 16th of this year, Gayle England anxiously awaited a trailer that she knew would deliver two retired thoroughbreds for whom her rehabilitation facility in Stroud, Oklahoma was their last, best hope.  Each had been living at nearby Rafter G Ranch, where they had been kept under the auspices of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation (TRF).

But she wasn't prepared for what she saw.  One of the horses, a 20-year-old chestnut gelding named, Wee Bit Special, was so weak that he had fallen down twice during the 12-mile ride to her farm.  The first time, the driver was able to get him back on his feet, but now, he just lay on the floor of the trailer, with no will or strength to rise.

"He doesn't stand a chance," Gayle thought.  "Four of us pulled him off the trailer and onto the ground, at which point he laid for approximately 10-15 minutes, after which we were able to get him up.  He was horribly shaken and was never able to recover.  Unfortunately, I was unable to help him and turn him around, and on February 11th, he died in our barn when the vet euthanized him."

It was a sad and piercing loss for Gayle and her husband, who own the 500-acre Circle E Ranch, which also cares for rescued thoroughbreds from The Exceller Fund and the Oklahoma Thoroughbred Retirement Program.  "The only comforting thing about this experience for me is that Wee Bit Special died with a full belly and I know he had all he wanted to eat and drink," Gayle recalled, sadly.

Wee Bit Special had arrived at the Circle E Ranch with a much more famous companion, the multiple graded stakes winning Clever Song (a son of the celebrated Clever Trick), whose illustrious pedigree and race record didn't protect him from having suffered the same neglect.  Now 29, Clever Song had long ago thrilled racing fans with his exploits on the turf, winning or placing in 21 of his 27 starts while earning $586,097.

Clever Song at the Circle E Ranch on March 20, 2011
Photo: Gayle England

But the once strapping athlete was now withered as a result of having received marginal care and inadequate nutrition for an extended period of time, and Gayle feared that she was going to lose him, too.  Two months after his arrival at Circle E, she reports that Clever Song is slowly regaining his weight, his strength, and his spirit.  "He's still a little wobbly, but he's trotting around now," she said, and added, "He has a long way to go and at age 29, it will take determination on his part and a watchful eye on mine.  However, he now walks with a spirit of life in him that he didn't have when he arrived here in emaciated condition."

How Clever Song and dozens of other horses got that way is what the Trustees of the Mellon Estate, a major benefactor of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, want to know.  As first reported by Joe Drape in The New York Times, they hired a Missouri-based equine veterinarian, Dr. Stacey Huntington, to assess the condition of each of the 1100+ horses for whom the TRF is responsible, at farms in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and throughout the east coast.

According to Julie Walawender, who had been acting as TRF's interim Herd Manager until she resigned last week, the Mellon representatives took great pains to ensure that the evaluations were done fairly and without bias.  To that end, they hired not only Dr. Huntington, but at each facility, a second AAEP-accredited veterinarian who had no prior affiliation with the farm, to make his or her own assessment of the horses, independently of Dr. Huntington's.  Notwithstanding those efforts, the TRF abruptly notified its satellite facilities on Saturday, March 19th that Dr. Huntington was no longer to be granted access to their horses, apparently believing that by silencing her, it would stem the negative publicity surrounding the reports about dozens of TRF horses whose current condition belies a history of neglect.

"The Mellon Estate was willing to invest whatever it took to put things back on track," explained Ms. Walawender.  "Dr. Huntington was fantastic."  TRF now says it will continue the evaluations of its horses but with one notable exception:  they will hire only vets who have already been caring for the horses they will be assessing, a practice that seems far less objective than the one the Mellon Trustees had instituted.

Gayle England had been trying to get the TRF Board's attention since November of 2009, when she contacted them to complain about the foundation's late payments, failure to provide worming medication and vaccines, and pressure to reduce the per diems being paid to her farm, and several others.  She cited the organization's threats to remove the 27 horses that were then in her care if she didn't accept a lower day rate, and when she wouldn't, the TRF took 24 of them away from her in March, 2010, moving them to the other Oklahoma facilities whose substandard care was revealed during the Mellon investigation.  Because Ms. England deemed that three of the horses were too old or too fragile to be trailered even a short distance, she assumed responsibility for them on her own dime, rather than put them at further risk.

Khastan on January 24, 2011, the day she arrived at Circle E
Photo: Gayle England

But by January, 2011, after the Mellon-funded herd assessments had begun to identify farms where TRF horses were in "dire need," Ms. England was asked by Mellon Trustees Beverly Carter and Ted Terry to accept some of the worst cases for rehabilitation.  In addition to Clever Song and Wee Bit Special, she took 12 other TRF thoroughbreds, including the 23-year-old stakes-placed Ohio-bred mare,Khastan, who had descended down the claiming ladder to end her career for a $5000 tag at Thistledown in 1994; Stone Master, a 23-year-old son of I'm Glad (Arg), who broke his maiden at Belmont in $35,000 claiming company but arrived at Circle E a sorry sight, plagued with rain rot and sloughed off skin; and Rocking Josh, a Kentucky-bred son ofWhitesburg who won or placed in 64 of his 108 starts, amassing earnings of over $557,000.  All three horses had been ingesting toxic rumensin-laced cattle feed at nearby Windmill Farm for an unknown period of time before they got to Circle E.

They are all safe now, thanks to the intervention of the Mellon Trustees and to the kindness of Ms. England, and so many of the other farms who are trying so earnestly to care for the TRF horses on slim wages.  The least the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation can do now, it would seem, is to ensure that these stewards of their treasured retirees are paid promptly, without fuss or finagling, so that the horses can live out their lives in health and peace.

CNN debuts four-part series on wild horse controversy

Captured paint mare and her foal
at Broken Arrow holding facility
Photo: Cat Kindsfather
No use without express written permission

In today's first segment of "Mustang Roundup: Taking the wild out of the West," a four-part series to be aired on CNN's American Morning, the cable network thrust the controversy over wild horse roundups into renewed national prominence, with a piece about the recent Lahontan "Gather," during which more than 100 mustangs were captured from the 11,000-acre Lahontan Herd Management Area (HMA) east of Carson City, Nevada.  

The one-day Lahontan roundup was held on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010, and CNN reporters Kim Segal andJohn Zarrella were there, along with videographer Carl Mrozac, and several independent observers, including Richard Couto of Animal Recovery Mission, Lacy Dalton of Let 'Em Run Foundation, Bonnie Matton of the Wild Horse Preservation League, and Simone Netherlands of Respect 4 Horses.  They witnessed the chase and entrapment of 117 wild horses, and it's the graphic footage of what happened there that CNN unveiled today.

"In their eyes, you see who they are," intones the narrator of the powerful two-minute piece, "rugged, powerful, independent:  they are the wild mustangs of the American west."

Part of the footage depicts a horrifying sequence in which the helicopter contractor seems to attack a lone burro with the skids of his vehicle, while the voiceover says, "Here, a helicopter chases one single burro, eventually knocking it over.  It staggers off."  The reporters quote Simone Netherlands, who characterizes the helicopter chases as "brutal," adding, "It's barbaric and it does not need to be done this way."

The BLM ultimately determined that two of the "wild" horses it had chased from the Lahontan HMA were privately owned, identifying a mare and her foal who had "domestic brands."  Another yearling colt was euthanized by Dr. Richard Sanford at the Palomino Valley holding facility because he "had an old healed fracture or dislocation involving his right hind fetlock joint.  He was noticeably lame (Grade III) and in much worse body condition (Body Condition II) than his herd mates.  His foot was severely deformed from the injury."

Only seven horses (two stallions and five mares) were released back into the Lahontan HMA a day after their capture, on Thursday, November 18th.

CNN will air Part II of "Mustang Roundup: Taking the wild out of the West" on Tuesday, January 4th, on American Morning.

It wasn't a good year for wild horses

Photo:  Cat Kindsfather
No use without written permission

On January 1st, 2010, a six-month-old colt became the first of the year's multitude of fatalities among wild horses who were chased from their western ranges and put behind bars, having forever lost their freedom and sometimes, their lives.


It happened during the infamous Calico Complex roundup in Nevada, as described in the subsequent necropsy report by Dr. Albert Kane, the BLM's onsite veterinarian:

"The (helicopter) pilot (gathering horses) reported this colt lied down twice while moving just 1/2 mile from the original location of the band of horses.  The second time, he radioed to the trap for wranglers to come with a trailer and assist the colt, as he seemed unlikely to make it to the trap.

I accompanied the wranglers to the location.  We arrived to the colt's location about 10 minutes after the call from the pilot.  On arrival, he was found dead, lying in left lateral recumbency, with no signs of struggle or agonal movements apparent in the surrounding snow."

As a result of his post-mortem examination, Dr. Kane ultimately concluded that the colt had died of "left side heart failure."  But, as the BLM and its veterinarians have done in case after case when wild horses have died from the stress of the helicopter chase, Dr. Kane went out of his way to shift the culpability for the colt's demise from the BLM and its contractor, noting that "Death (was) caused by acute pulmonary artery rupture attributable to a pre-existing, probably congenital heart condition."  And even though Dr. Kane specifically characterized the colt's death as "gather related," the BLM's Calico updates said it was not.

More than 120 wild horses of the 1922 who were scoured from the Calico Herd Management Areas ultimately perished, and untold numbers of unborn foals were aborted from their dams' stress-wrenched bodies before they could ever take a breath.

Word games, deception, cruelty, and a macabre twisting of the truth permeated the BLM's relentless campaign to sweep wild horses from their rightful ranges in 2010.  And at the end of the year, a long-awaited audit report from the Office of the Inspector General simply rubber-stamped the wrangling and warehousing techniques of a federal agency that is seemingly spiraling out of control.

With the keynote appearance of BLM Director Bob Abbey at next week's pro-slaughter Summit of the Horse, the agency's true agenda is starting to come into clearer view.  Anyone who cares about horses should be alarmed.  It is a time to fight back, not to shrink back, lest 2011 bring more of the same misery to America's wild horses.

A second chance for Chon-Teh

It was the night of Thursday, December 2nd, 2010, and Carol Poole couldn't sleep.  The Facebook image of a frightened black mustang mare who had landed in the "kill pen" at the New Holland auction haunted her.  The forlorn mare, whose neck brand identified her as one the BLM had taken from the wild, was destined for a one-way trip to a slaughterhouse unless someone stepped in to save her.  When nobody else did, Carol realized it was up to her.

Even though she wasn't really thinking about adding another horse to her band of three at her 10-acre Almosta Farm in Oakham, Mass., Carol knew she had to intervene to save the mare's life.  Carol is a devoted wild horse advocate who has been working passionately to end the relentless spate of BLM roundups.  With fundraising help from a bevy of like-minded supporters on the PA Kill Broker Owned Facebook page, a chunk of the $595 "bail" money was chipped in to cover the costs of the mare's purchase price, as well as the coggins certificateand health exam that she would need to make the interstate journey from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts.  And by the morning of Tuesday, December 7th, the mare was home free.

But how in the world did she find herself in harm's way?  Carol made it her mission to find out.  She contacted the BLM's Steve Meyers, who looked up the brand and discovered that this horse had been trapped and removed from the 65,000-acre Three Fingers Herd Management Area in eastern Oregon back in 2002.  She had been adopted in 2004 by a person who was identified by Meyers as Amish.  We don't know what happened to her in the interim, but we do know that the New Holland auction is often used as a dumping ground for horses owned by members of the local Amish community.  According to the BLM's records, the mare is 10 years old.

When she walked off the trailer onto Carol Poole's farm in early December, the little mustang mare appeared to be sweet, serene, and surprisingly easy to handle.  But her eyes were "glassy and watery," Carol recalled, signaling that all was not well.  And within a day or so, the mare's demeanor changed so dramatically that Carol is convinced she had been drugged prior to the sale.  By the day before Christmas, Carol admitted that "we still can't get near her" to touch her, pet her, or to remove her halter, which has obviously been attached to the mare's head for a long time.  "She doesn't want anything to do with humans," Carol said, sadly, and "she shies away if you move your hands.  I think she's been abused."

But Carol has no intention of giving up on this shy, gentle creature whose fearfulness cannot hide a quiet dignity and nobility of spirit.  To honor her, Carol determined that the mare should have a name befitting her wild heritage, and after consulting with William Firecloud, Jr., she has chosen to call the mare, "Wash-Ah-Kah Chon-Teh," which is Dakota Teton dialect for "Strong Heart."

For now, "Chon Teh" (pronounced "Shon Tay") has a roomy paddock across from three other horses (including another mustang), access to a run-in shed, fresh water, and as much hay as she can eat.  Slowly, she is allowing herself to get closer to people, and she seems to understand that she is finally in the arms of people who have no wish to harm her.  

Carol dreams that she will one day be able to return Chon Teh to a western reserve where she can roam in wide open spaces with other mustangs.  "I personally don't think any wild horse belongs to any person," Ms. Poole emphasized.  "The only reason we took her was to save her life."  And in doing so, she has given Chon Teh the most precious gift of all: a second chance.

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Laura Leigh seeks injunction to immediately halt wild horse roundups

Barely 18 hours before BLM-hired helicopters are scheduled to lift off in pursuit of almost 600 wild horses in the Silver King Herd Management Area south of Ely, Nevada, advocate and journalist Laura Leigh went to federal court in Reno yesterday in an effort to ground them.

And Ms. Leigh's far-ranging motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) wouldn't stop there.  She seeks nothing less than an injunction to cause the immediate cessation of "all helicopter operations wherever situated," all "transporting, whever situated or intended, of captured wild horses, feral horses," and other BLM-managed horses, and all "bulk shipment of horses from long-term holding facilities, short-term holding facilities, or sale horses outside the regular BLM adoption program."  Ms. Leigh wants to impose these prohibitions not just on the proposed Silver King Gather, but on all ongoing and planned roundups under BLM jurisdiction in every state in which they are occurring or are expected to occur.

The implications of Ms. Leigh's suit are huge, and potentially ground-breaking.  If successful, her motion would not only halt--at least temporarily--the anticipated BLM roundup at Silver King, in Nevada, but a host of other previously scheduled roundups, including the controversial Wyoming gather of almost 2000 wild horses in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek HMAs, which is due to start at the end of next week.
Ultimately, when these roundups resume, Ms. Leigh wants access, and she wants transparency.  In the wake of the disastrous Calico Complex roundup earlier this year, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 100 horses, the BLM has gone to extreme lengths to restrict public observers from witnessing its wild horse chases, entrapment methods, and stress-filled holding sites, hoping that by hiding what actually happens when wild horses are forcefully wrenched from their ranges, it would silence the outrage of an impassioned American public.

Instead, the voices of protest have only grown louder.

Read the rest of the story on Examiner.com

Thoroughbred Mare Stolen in Dead of Night in Pennsylvania is Still Missing

It was unusually windy on Wednesday night, September 8th, so Tracy Twarkusky didn't think much of it when she thought she saw the motion lights come on around 8:00pm, out by the barn within 200 yards of her home.  She thought the vibration of the wind gusts was responsible, but still, something seemed vaguely amiss, so she pulled out a pair of binoculars to see if they would reveal something out of the ordinary.  They didn't.

Tracy reasoned that her two dogs would bark if anyone had approached her 23-acre farm in rural Columbia Cross Roads, Pennsylvania, but the dogs hadn't made a peep.  She could still see the lights outside the barn of the 80-acre farm next door, which housed several thoroughbreds, including an imposing eight-year-old thoroughbred mare, Hero's Home, and her three-month-old colt, "Little Man."  But she never heard a sound.

The next morning, as she rushed to bring her daughter to the school bus, Tracy thought it odd that Little Man was standing alone by the fence outside the barn, whinnying as if to tell her something was wrong.  Hero's Home was nowhere in sight, but Tracy hastily thought she might just be resting in her run-in stall.  But when she returned.  Tracy's heart sank.  The big, 17.2 bay dark bay mare wasn't in her stall.  She was gone.  Only her halter and lead rope remained.

And now, more than a week after her unexplained disappearance in the middle of the night, there is only one conclusion to be drawn:  Hero's Home was stolen.

Read the rest of the story on Examiner.com

Death on the Track

Just minutes before she fell and died in the stretch of the second race at Saratoga yesterday, Forest Whip was looking beautiful and seemingly relaxed in the paddock. The elegant bay daughter of Forestry walked calmly, gently swishing her tail. There wasn't a clue that anything was wrong. She didn't seem to have a care in the world, and I was impressed with her easy demeanor. She was making only her second start.

I happened to be watching Forest Whip because when I'd handicapped the race, I thought she could win it: a $60,000 maiden claimer against other two-year-old fillies going six furlongs. She was stepping down in class, and switching from turf to dirt: she looked interesting, both on paper, and as a pretty presence in the paddock. The last time I checked the tote board, as I stepped up to the window to place a modest bet on her, I realized that lots of other people liked Forest Whip's chances, too. She went off the favorite, at 9-5.

I could see through my binoculars that Forest Whip balked slightly as she was led up to the gate. With a little bit of coaxing, she went in without much fuss. In hindsight, it would have been better if she hadn't.

Read the rest of the story on Examiner.com