Dutch harness horse drama. Update major mare/ foal neglect Nov 2023 post 1782 Update Kate Shearer responds post 1930 Nov 25/23

Well interestingly the way Kate phrases it “I was blessed to only lose two mares” absolutely was throwing blame on the care. Of course she is complete unreliable. I wonder if the one that died of an infection is the one she was talking about on the Warmblood Breeders Group? Mare came down with an infection after being impregnated with frozen semen (no idea of Ai or in vitro ), also apparently some of the straws broke during thawing, and she wanted to know if she could get the semen broker to replace.

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Speaking of the warmblood breeder’s group - I was wondering if this has made its way over to facebook and while she is not named in the original post there is a very, very angry conversation happening in the biggest (that I know of) dressage focused breeding group about this topic. I haven’t gone through all the comments but I am very much hoping she’s named in them so people know exactly who she is and who to steer clear of. No one who does this should be able to stay in business. It is a disgrace if she is able, knowing what we know now.

Those poor horses. :frowning:

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how does a horse rupture a diaphragm?

That has to be a typo or error?!

It’s pretty uncommon.
Sometimes as a result of trauma or congenital abnormality.
Occurs rarely during late pregnancy or parturition associated with increased abdominal pressure

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I saw him last week at horse and hound.

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Did he face any consequences for the incident or was it one of those indeterminate things that get thrown out of court because it’s not clear who started it? I’m sure Kate would have been bragging all over FB if he was actually convicted of anything.

Thanks
I was thinking broad ligament rupture but that didnt make sense

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Community Service and a fine under FL program for first nonviolent offenders. She called his girlfriend a whore/ slut. Kate gave the cops his phone number, so she obviously knew him, and of course knows he didn’t return to England.
This is all documented in public records.
Also during this time period she sued her father and another horsewoman in AZ.
This horrible excuse for a human is obviously mentally unstable. She relished her involvement with the above incident and in her involvement with getting a bartender fired.
Now that she’s been publicly outed without a doubt, both here and on Ocala Facebook groups, my fear is she’ll skip town and leave the poor creatures without anyone.
It takes a while for the authorities to get involved, and it will be a mess to sort out who owns what, if she leased the poor mares.

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Good to know how it all turned out.

I had no doubt about her as a person after following her FB and seeing her interactions on COTH on both DHH threads. I actually started this thread a year ago to ask if anyone knew anything about the bar brawl!

I had no idea about the horse abuse.

I am really curious how that will play out. I’m wondering if there’s a legal reason she has to hire an auction firm for herd dispersal, like she’s declared bankruptcy or there’s a stablemans lien or it’s how she mollified the sheriff and AC. That would be in the best interests of the horses.

Otherwise it’s possible she’s just saying this to buy time, and will ship them all out back to the backwoods where there’s less horse community oversight.

I wonder what happens to the leased EMS broodmares that are pregnant with 2024 foals?

I’m also just broadly curious about how the horse neglect went down. I gather Kate had rented dry stalls somewhere that she referred to as “my own farm.” Then she hired (or didn’t hire) staff that she either paid (or didn’t pay). Amd went away to make cash braiding. Obviously the horses were in
poor condition before that going by photos she posted. But nothing went public until a customer picked up a weanling they purchased in utero who was horribly skinny.

Was she the sole occupant of the rental property? Was noone else coming onsite to see what was happening? I assume from the photos there was no regular hoof or vet care so no there to see.

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I don’t know anything about this specific situation.

I do know there are places in Ocala that have several different barns scattered around the property. So if somebody rented a whole barn, there would be no reason for anybody outside to see those horses unless they stopped by to visit.

The thoroughbreds in training at those places would probably be seen by the other people using the common training track. But the mares and foals, maybe not so much, depending on the layout.

Ah I feel like someone said it was race track connected. From what I’ve seen of track folks they are quite territorial/private and wouldn’t go poking their noses into another professional’s barn. If everyone is renting dry stalls in different barns from an absentee owner, track people are not going to be micromanaging some wierd low-end riding horse operation with fugly weanlings in a separate building.

I mean track people are great in an actual emergency, blood or fire or loose horse or cast horse. They’ll wade in and help out while the ammies are standing there dithering or screaming. But they aren’t going to go snooping around a separate barn and trying to figure out if the horses are being fed. And they don’t want random people paying too much attention to their own horses. Live and let live.

On the other hand, a track focused facility with stalls and a track is a horrible situation for foals and weanlings. They need to be on a field to move around, develop hooves, get balance. Even the TB people don’t keep foals in track stalls.

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The place I visited in Ocala a couple of years ago (because a friend of mine had rented a barn there for his young thoroughbreds in training) had a lot of different barns. So there may have been some that had lots of turn out. I don’t know.

I definitely saw some that had paddocks, anyway.

But I think there are a lot of places like that around Ocala, where people can come in for the winter or year round and rent dry stalls to get ready for the horse shows or for the Ocala thoroughbred sales or what have you.

I know my friend even rented the pony he was using when he trained those thoroughbreds. And then when his young stock went to the sale, the pony went back where he came from.

If the facility owner has 500-600 stalls scattered around the property in however many barns of different sizes, that owner is probably not going to walk around all day long checking on the assorted animals in those stalls.

And if your business model is renting to professional trainers, either track or show, you expect at a minimum to get your rent, and the trainer to have horse care to a reasonably high unproblematic standard because they are a professional. Rent them the barn, let them do their thing.

Pros with “high dollar horses” don’t starve them unless they are BSC.

I still wonder if Kate fell behind on her rent and the apparent herd dispersal is a lien situation.

My bingo prediction is the apparent herd dispersal auction is either under legal pressure of some sort or a diversionary tactic while she spirits her stock away to the backwoods of Alabama or some such.

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If they get spirited away to the backwoods of Alabama they will fit right in with some of the foals for sale in Alabama Horses for Sale Facebook sites. If she wasn’t using the services of an Ocala based vet for embryo transfer I don’t know why she chose that location for her breeding program. She could have rented land in the hinterlands - Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia where the weather is mild and the mares and foals could be out on acreage with good grass nine months of the year and raised pretty cheaply. But that would not have sounded as impressive as saying "her " farm was in Ocala.

I would not hold my breath waiting on an auction of her horses.

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A horse I used to own ( this happened after I sold him) fell in turnout and ruptured his diaphragm. His owners were kind enough to track me down and let me know what happened. That was the first time I had ever heard of that happening, not a real common occurence.

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[quote]I would not hold my breath waiting on an auction of her horses
[/quote]

100%

I will believe the “auction” story when I see the final bids posted somewhere. Much like her last 5? 10? “I’m quitting breeding!!!” posts…

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When she first hit our radar last year she was already living in Florida (that bar brawl) but her horses were apparently parked in multiple places including Oklahoma, low cost places while she did dogs and braiding and threatened to write the Florida bar exams so she could sue us all for being mean. Then things went bad in Oklahoma (maybe elsewhere too?) this past spring so it may have made sense to have her breeding stock in the same time zone she was living in. Except even so, she’s obviously a very absentee owner and can’t see poor condition in person herself.

I agree, unless she is being compelled by someone else’s lawyer, I don’t think she will auction off her horses.

She does have manual skills as a braider, that seems to be the only thing that’s worked out for her. But she manages to lose clients and helpers through being an awful person online.

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Some of those TB farms in Ocala do have good fields. But they aren’t particularly inexpensive. I know one reputable h/j training operation there that has a breeding business also, and they bought a large chunk of land off one of those that wasn’t doing much TB training anymore. It was very expensive at the time but much less so than leasing the space year after year. Friend of mine boarded a couple babies bought as foals in that program while they were there working for the training business, and the baby board was not particularly cheap. And this was almost a decade ago I was talking to friend about that.

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@Edre–she was named on Warmblood breeders group-- in the comments, and then much later down the thread. :slight_smile:

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