Wtf does this even mean??
“She said she lets them get thinner in the winter because overfeeding horses in the colder months can be unhealthy, and can lead to a deadly blood-related condition that can occurs when a horse overeats.”
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I think this was the moment her lawyer bailed.
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For real!
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I think she’s referring to cushings?
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That makes no medical sense and makes her sound ignorant AF. My Cushings boy goes into winter chubbeh and I damn well make sure he stays that way. No vet in the world would sign off on a 1.5 BCS being in any way healthy for any horse much less one with preexisting medical issues.
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No I think she is referring to horses that come through winter with a body score of “8” and then the spring grass comes up and they founder. Maybe confusing being Insulin Resistant with being a “blood condition”. So some facts have been mangled because this person doesn’t know anything about horses and is repeating what she thought she heard.
But there is no comparison with having a 1.5 BSC and letting a horse drop to a 6 in winter. I guess with a 1.5 BSC the horse never founders because it dies of malnutrition before it can founder so I guess she is right.
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I mean, only some of them die. It’s mind blowing to me how much horses can survive. The vets, heartbreakingly, don’t seem as shocked, since they’ve seen things like this before, but I was quite certain most of them who were in such horrific shape were not going to make it and here they are just eating their soaked alfalfa and living pretty normally with various heart damage/no teeth/jacked up feet/liver damage/brief inability to swallow. Surely any of mine who attempt to die over things like a sudden change of temperature could stand to take notes? But then you have to wonder if only the tough ones are left.
I think it’s an overall comment on metabolic disease. I guess I need to read up on it all since my dude has some feet that look really Suspect to me as it pertains to his ability to eat spring grass, but it’s definitely my first rodeo with some of this.
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It sure does
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Updated article on animal control’s response:
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The victim blaming on the comments of the articles I’ve seen by non-horse people is sickening. The horse owners paid for a service which included hay and or feed. How difficult is it to understand that. She stole their money and purposefully starved their horses.
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There are people here who went the same route so I guess I can understand how non-horse people would do the same thing, as sad as it is.
What I find the most annoying is how animal control acts like they had no clue and are now gladly taking care of a problem they did not know about.
Edit to add - I just learned that if you (general) open an article and close it and come back too many times they want you to subscribe to get back into that same article.
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You can use incognito mode. Press Control-Shift-N on your keyboard, it will open a new browser window. Paste the link for the article in the new browser window and you’re good to go.
I am so glad the wonderful folks who worked to get these horses removed are pushing back on the narrative that this instance is the first time Animal Control was made aware. 
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Many of us COTH long timers have seen this too many times that it becomes hard to recall a time when we trusted people.
AC4H and other scam rescues, starvation cases like the Mustang one, the NY state tb woman, the ponies in Goshen NY,… Sooo many:.
Jason Meduna, Three Strikes Ranch, Mustangs
Canterbury farns, Polish arabs, MD
There have been so many that I can’t even recall the names, which is frankly sad.
So yes, some of us forget that this lesson hasn’t been learned by everyone yet.
Lets make sure the lesson gets learned so fewer owners and horses have to learn it the hard way.
.
And yes, let’s educate AC too, that a starving horse of any age isn’t acceptable or humane.
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I think that kind of reaction is a large part of why this has gone on as long as it has. People were already feeling shame and guilt after finding out about their horse, and they just couldn’t open themselves up to that kind of criticism on top of everything else they were dealing with.
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Did this woman have a boarding barn with inside boarders as well? Did none of them notice the starving pasture boarded horses?
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No, her inside boarders were being rehabbed. No clients regularly on and off the property.
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Any new developments, Railbird?
And an update on Poofy?
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Poof is doing pretty well, I’m going to hang out with him this afternoon and get some foot photos for a podiatrist who agreed to help us for a reduced rate (Andrea Floyd) . His fever is down and he’s packing on weight with a real vigor that makes us think he will be on a diet by may 
What is really mind blowing to me is that for the purposes of both the case and just general best practices for starved horses, I don’t think any of them are getting much beyond soaked alfalfa cubes and a little senior feed for vitamins and minerals, and they are all showing improvement. No deworming, tooth floating, crazy feed regimes, new medications, just basic good care. Their bodies wouldn’t tolerate much else yet anyways, but it’s both heartening to see them improve and disheartening to see that this is ALL THAT IT TOOK.
Her first hearing is 3/6 which I believe is where a plea will be entered and defense attorney identified.
I’m struggling somewhat with some of the hate and nastiness being leveled at her on Facebook, I have to say. I know that “love the sinner, hate the sin” has been taken over by homophobes, and while I really and truly hate what she did, I do think that she still deserves basic human decency and some of the people being mean directly to her are just not really helping, and are probably feeding the narrative of her supporters.
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“What is really mind blowing to me is that for the purposes of both the case and just general best practices for starved horses, I don’t think any of them are getting much beyond soaked alfalfa cubes and a little senior feed for vitamins and minerals, and they are all showing improvement. No deworming, tooth floating, crazy feed regimes, new medications, just basic good care. Their bodies wouldn’t tolerate much else yet anyways, but it’s both heartening to see them improve and disheartening to see that this is ALL THAT IT TOOK.“
I can never work the quote feature when I want to, but THIS is what is so baffling and maddening. Literally all it took was to feed this horses an adequate amount of food and they have already shown marked improvement. It would have been so simple to not let it get to this point
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