Loudon Co Animal control is asking for info from anyone who has boarded or received services there.
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Well that is one vague article.
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True, but to have 28 horses immediately seized suggests that they were in seriously bad shape. I also strongly suspect that the photo accompanying the article is a generic, stock photo and not representative of the pasture or horses there.
But hopefully, people who have boarded there or otherwise know what’s been happening there will contact the authorities.
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It is weird that there was this many horses seized and no reasons given for that happening. Not a single photo of a bad hoof trim or a skinny horse or a horse looking longingly at an empty water trough.
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I’m local. There are plenty of skin and bone horses at that property. It’s rough and AC are doing all they call while following the law.
Cram has been banned from the local racetracks for a while now.
They found a dead horse in the lake as well.
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27 horses and 1 goat is what I was told.
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I’m not local, but have several friends who are local and were sharing stuff about it (nothing particularly newsworthy other than she’s banned from tracks and has lots of aliases). Loudon County Animal Services posted the following over the weekend:
But I’m not sure if the photo has anything to do with the seizure.
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There’s another very recent neglect case in the same general area that also resulted in arrest warrants and seizure. Apparently the owner of these horses involved in this case is a trainer at Charles Town. I hope they ban her as well, if they haven’t already.
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OMG. Poor thing.
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I am so glad they finally removed those horses. I called about them when I drove by and saw the emaciated horse in a field of weeds.
There used to be a horse at Tri-State Pet care ,down the road from that house off Leetown, that should have been removed. I called multiple times, but it had access to a round bale, shelter, water. If the necessities are provided nothing WV AC can do.
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It seems like there’s an awful neglect case each year in that same area.
Just so sad.
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I think neglect cases are on the rise everywhere because it is astronomically expensive to own horses.
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I don’t disagree in general.
But in the two cases mentioned on this thread (Amanda Cram and now Toschia Spriggs), both had connections to the track in Charles Town. Cram has resold TBs for quite awhile, but the track did identify her as a problem and she was banned. Spriggs? She hadn’t been banned to my knowledge. I heard she actually had a trainer’s license?
And just in 2023, there was another case involving horrific neglect and Harvey Dodson. Same area as Spriggs. Also connected to the track in Charles Town, although they did the right thing and tried to ban him years before the neglect case. That ended in litigation.
Anyway… suffice it to say that in the immediate area near the Charles Town track, neglect cases involving people who had been connected to that track are pretty common. It’s sad. There are lots of good people who seem to do right by their horses once they need to stop racing, and plenty of good resellers in the area… but neglect cases also seem to happen over and over.
It’s even worse in other areas of WV near some other tracks.
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This is the problem. There aren’t good resellers in the area and Charles Town is a tough track known to have horses that come off and need let down. They come off tight. Not all, but more than not.
Trainers give away horses to anyone that will take them without vetting.
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I hear you. I was probably being too generous.
I do know of some good resellers. Most of whom seem to be in Virginia and Maryland. Some who are not so good… but the horses aren’t starving.
Charles Town is definitely tough. It gets worse as you head west in the state. Mountaineer is next level.
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This is one of those things I do not get.
Because if the horse is that skinny (like in that photo) then clearly, even if there is visible food there, the animal is not getting the necessities it requires.
They can’t get that skinny and have what their body considers necessities (clearly there might be a medical condition going on, but again, then that requires other necessities which are not given).
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I don’t know about other states but in Florida at the ACC I worked at for 22yrs they never wanted to seize horses. They would rather continously monitor them in place, then take them and have them on the county payroll. Depending on the livestock laws in area you can produce a few feed store receipts and an old vet bill to ACC and they will go away. Most of our horse cases had been followed for YEARS before they finally seized them.
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