Based on the pictures attached to the filing (publicly available) and assuming standard stall walls are 4’ before the bars Cobain appears to have been tied so his nose could not be lower than 5’.
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Yep. Had a western farrier tack on a shoe for me. Never again (for a myriad of reasons, the shoeing NOT being one of them). His ranting about show jumpers and “needing” to learn patience and be tied up being second to calling a certain group of people the R word.
Back to the main point - I told him I prefer to have a horse who can think for themselves and have a little spirit to get us out of sticky situations. If my horse were an obedient slave, we probably would’ve had a bad accident by now (not because I’m a bad rider, but because jumping big sticks at a fast pace isn’t for the half-dead breed).
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To be fair, my mare one day randomly decided to not load. We were the only ones to ever haul her and 100% of the time without incident, either before, during or after the trailer ride. I’d had her for 4 years at that point and never, not once, had she hesitated to load. Of course it was the last day of a two week show and it was about 100 degrees outside. We finally figured it out, and now we have to load her with the partition completely open and can slide it back once she’s on. That was two years ago. Now? We don’t have to move to partition over anymore and she loads every single time. Again.
Horses, man.
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Can you send me the filing link? I’m having trouble finding it
I saw ONE of the photos.
Before I say my opinion of what I saw in that ONE photo I am going to say that I did not measure anything in the photo.
Yes, the dead horse hanging from the tie was hanging in a way that their front feet were off the ground.
So that is not an incorrect comment.
What I saw (again, did not try to make measurements off the photo, just what I observed) was the horse was tied to high point, not an unusual thing, with a shorter tie, but not the short one imagines from the horror stories of say Western Pleasure training where their head is in a forced position way above natural. Shorter than just, safe can’t get a leg over anything, but not so short that anyone would gasp if they saw it. A relaxed natural napping head set was likely not an option, but certainly not crazy elevated head either.
Disclaimer (again), I do not know these people, my comment is based solely from looking at one photo of this horse as it was found dead, before it was let down.
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You just described a cutting horse…who probably was also taught to wait patiently while tied.
And, I promise you, no one riding a ranch horse on an actual ranch wants to or intends to train self-preservation out of the horses they depend upon for getting their job done safely.
No one need look down their nose at good horsemen who do different things with horses.
What is the R word?
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I know both parties. I am not surprised by Shannon’s behavior. She left her high end hunter/jumper farm towards the end of her junior years to go to be a big fish in a smaller pond. From there, she made false claims of training horses (who were already very broke school masters). She had an arrogance about her that made her lies even more immoral.
When she aged out, she went pro instantly without a lick of experience in the real world.
Cobain was a Kyle King ISH, phenomenal jumper that miss Mennen was looking to sell. She sent him to Hat Trick where Shannon claimed him as her own, using him to gain notoriety in the show ring. All this time I had assumed it was a free lease as Shannon did whatever she pleased, and it appeared to benefit Shannon more than anyone else.
It was saddening to learn that the Mennens had paid for her services, including transitioning the horse to barrel racing, which terrified him. No wonder he stopped loading the trailer.
The photos of him hanging in his stall, bloodied and lifeless with fresh scratches on the wall are very graphic, violent, and repulsive.
For a solid year, Shannon claimed that the “accidental” death was unpreventable before speculating neighbors uncovered to truth along with other horrific abuse stories.
The article only scratches the surface and I hope to God that Shannon is held accountable.
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This is sickening. Me, too.
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To clarfy. this is a part of my farrier’s comments that I did not post. In italics .
She tied the rope up high like you would tie a horse to a trailer at a show to keep them from stepping over the rope. But when you need to step away from your horse at a show there is always someone nearby to ask to keep an eye on your horse while you are gone.
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I thought that the complaint said the horse had lived at Hat Trick Sporthorses for 6 years. That’s a long time to keep a sales horse. That’s also a long time for a pro to keep a horse and not fix a loading issue.
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Can someone post the link to the complaint please? Or let us know where it is posted? I have no intentions of looking at photos! 
For those wanting to see the filing, here’s how I found it.
Go to
https://publicindex.sccourts.org/aiken/publicindex/
Click Accept
For the last name type in Mennen
Click on the case number
Click on the tab for “Actions” and on the right side of the page there will be attached documents. The filing and photos are there. Warning - the photos are in the last section where there are 3 attached documents. The first document is the filing. The other 2 are photos.
I skimmed the filing and apparently Cobain isn’t the only horse that she tied this way and left unattended.
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Thank you. I read it. Poor Cobain. I can’t believe S hid the body. 
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I know he was leased out during that time frame bc he was at a farm in NC with a Jr rider.
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That is the part that I hate.
Why not tell the owner where their horse’s body is?
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The entire thing is horrific.
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I am appalled that she is an equestrian team coach at the university.
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Me too. Sadly, IHSA teams usually have a hard time finding farms to host them because of the lack of school horses.
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Because he’s probably in a landfill or a renderer and however stupid this trainer is about horse management, she’s probably just clever enough to realize that this particular truth would make things worse for her. Too bad they are plenty bad anyway (said no one ever).
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Agreed. 6 years is a long time, which is also why I had assumed that the Mennens were not paying anything and that it was a care lease to benefit only shannon in her new business start.
The horse never had previous loading issues. Probably only had trouble loading that day, as she changed him to barrel racing gear with a very sharp hackabit.
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