Do y’all also hog manes instead of roaching them?
Not just Australian. (ETA: scratch that. I learned of the term from Matt Harnacke, who is Australian but lives in Europe, so I assumed it was also used in Europe. Maybe not?)
Hog, roach, clipper, zipper, or as I call it, “The Australian braid”
Or just plain “ah just cut the ba$tard awf”
13 Likes
They use lorries or vans a bit in the UK.
1 Like
FWIW, sometimes these types of tools are necessary to keep you or staff safe. Your barn staff needs to turn your horse out without getting dragged or kicked. If your horse isn’t capable of doing that without a chain over his nose, tough cookies. They aren’t there to train your animal, that’s your job.
12 Likes
The barn owner is claiming the horse died of natural causes and she is not at fault.
1 Like
There is NO WAY those photos show anything BUT an awful struggle! Unbelievable…and disgusting.
14 Likes
I understand that lawyers will be lawyers, but it absolutely amazes me when lawyers try to claim something that is so completely contrary to the evidence. Did the lawyer even look at the photos? There’s no way, IMO, that any jury would look at those photos without comprehending that there was a struggle.
I can see a good lawyer claiming that the struggle was caused by a massive natural event like a stroke or a seizure, but I don’t understand why they would think it’s in their client’s best interest to claim that there was no struggle at all. (Though I’m sure they’ll ultimately claim stroke/seizure/heart attack/whatever other catastrophic health event they can think of for the injuries and blood. Still, even if it had been natural causes, the horse obviously struggled as it was dying.)
I wonder if the trainer had CCC insurance? I would have thought that most insurance companies would have settled in this case. Of course, they may (will probably?) yet settle, but knowing how insurance companies work I would have thought that an insurance company wouldn’t want to spend too much money litigating this one.
6 Likes
I kind of laughed at the comment about the undisturbed straw bedding, because when I looked at the photo that showed the bedding it was such a mess that I could not tell what kind of bedding it was.
10 Likes
Absolutely outrageous. The walls, the floor, the stall front… nothing about that said “natural causes”.
12 Likes
I couldn’t agree more @endlessclimb! If natural causes why hide the body? This whole case is highly disturbing on so many levels. She is right up there with that vet student who took horses in as companions for her barrel horse and sent them straight slaughter.
15 Likes
Whoa.
Thanks for posting a link, and directions B on how to find the photos.
This makes my heart hurt. I hope she is held accountable for this poor horse’s obvious suffering.
4 Likes
Forgive me, I have only passingly kept up with this thread. I saw the photos and that poor horse. What is the blood splatter from, did the rope halter cut into him?
Those are some graphic photos. I was prepared, but even then.
My heart hurts for that poor thing. As an aside, it’s one of the many reasons I won’t hard tie, and never tie a horse in a rope halter.
12 Likes
If defense counsel is the same “John W. Harte, Jr.” then he has an… interesting… history himself:
https://www.sccourts.org/opinions/displayOpinion.cfm?caseNo=27051
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/columbia/press-releases/2010/co101210a.htm
Based on the email address on the answer and the photos on these two websites, I think it’s the same person…
3 Likes
Anyone who doesn’t want the details, stop reading now …
I’m almost certain that I see a tooth in the blood on the outside of the stall. This is speculation, but my guess is that at some point the horse got his teeth stuck in the bars and pulled/broke the tooth (and who knows what else) and his mouth was the source of some or most of the blood. Without a necropsy, no way to tell for sure, but the owner will probably have an expert who will testify that it is a tooth, and that the only way it and the large quantity of blood could have ended up on the outside of the stall would be through a violent struggle.
7 Likes
Also, when horses die of natural causes other than colic, be it stroke, seizure or heart attack, it looks sort of like Hickstead did: staggering, lying down, stopping breathing. I know of two sudden deaths where the horses just abruptly fell over.
Death by natural causes looks absolutely, positively nothing like this.
16 Likes
That makes sense.
The photos made me wonder how this happened; not so much the tying, but how the horse died from being tied. The blood makes it obvious there was a significant struggle.
I wonder if he bit at a fly, somehow got his tooth or part of his head stuck on the rope, and panicked. I once had a horse nip at a fly while wearing a correctly fitted running martingale. Somehow, the O-ring of the martingale got caught in his incisor. He completely panicked and went straight up, but thankfully once he realized he could not move his neck he paused long enough for me to rip the saddle off. Very scary - when horses panic things can go wrong so quickly.
Obviously his death is inexcusable and I feel so sorry for him. That was an awful image to see.
EDIT: I just remembered trainer hid the body. Awful.
9 Likes
I mentioned this uptrend but my guess on the tooth is the horse set back, halter stretched, and it ended up in his mouth. I’ve seen it happen - rope halters won’t break but they absolutely stretch
3 Likes
In the picture the halter is stretched for sure but you can also see that it is not in his mouth 
2 Likes
Not at that moment, but it could have contributed to the frantic struggle that poor horse went through.
1 Like
