jetsmom-I hope the animal control job didn’t exist, like most of what she said, because that’s truly horrifying.
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Let’s clarify.
There is a huge difference between Munchausen by proxy and simply wanting to investigate real signs and symptoms.
Individuals with Munchausen by proxy either make up or cause the signs/symptoms. Very different than concerned owner looking to help his horse. One is good care, the other is a psychiatric disorder.
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Having worked in hospital ERs for many years I got to see more of this than (a)I wanted to and (b) that you imagine would be out there. Like the woman whose children all had heart conditions - not. She wanted desperately for them to be sick so she could get attention. The son ran away from home and refused to return and the daughter decided to be what her mom wanted as that was the only way she was going to get any attention. There’s more - probably a whole book full. And you have to be very careful how you deal with these people. It’s a fine line between getting sick of the constant visits and wanting to make sure that all is really well and keep track of the victim.
As far as animals: I used to ride with a woman that had a raging case of it. All her animals had something wrong with them but her horse received the brunt of this attention. There was always something “wrong” with him. He was always “suffering” and in “agony.” She actually told me one time that her horse had problems that vets could not see. I remember thinking “EEK and one of them is 5 ft tall and has blonde hair and wears too much makeup.” Her Chicken Little attitude towards every twinge the poor thing had led to his death as one day the vet had had enough of running out at top speed for nothing, put her at the bottom of his to do list. The horse was colicking and died.
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I perceive that case to be different than MBP or Munchausen’s, though I could be wrong. She just mutilated animals, and seemed to feel she was the only one who could fix them. I didn’t see that as seeking attention, if anything, she tried to avoid it.
@Ghazzu, your brief post was much too brief! Can’t leave us all hanging like that without at least a vague example! I’ve always wondered how vets deal with such situations.
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I understand MBP to be about making a well person or animal ill.
There are also folks who gravitate to NQR horses because they would rather nurse than ride. And then there are folks who want a healthy, fit horse but who are in training programs that make the horses break down, but never quite make the connection between bad riding and lameness.
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In a nutshell, I kept my subscription to “Equus” because I could predict, with a fair amount of certainty, that whatever their featured “disease of the month” type article was, I was going to get a call from this person describing those exact clinical signs. Including a draft horse with HYPP…
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:lol: Oh dear. I’m sorry. A horsey hypochondriac with poor reading comprehension.
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Yes.
Several years ago I knew of 3 horses in NE literally starving to death. 2 women had been trying to get help for them, they had watched while a horse actually had died on the place, and watched while the ‘owner’ brought in a nice mare that was if anything slightly overweight, and less than year later she was rack of bones. From their observation of these 3, they estimated they were not old horses, not by a long shot. But there wasn’t any grazing in the field where they were. At all. Nor anything else.
The sheriff would do nothing. I shared the photos and story and people called to ask why nothing was being done. Instead of doing anything? Sheriff called and threatened one of the callers with arrest. I called the sheiff’s office myself, and told them it was idiotic they were doing nothing.
So…sheriff charged the 2 women who had been trying to help horses with DTP. These are 2 women in their 60s or so, who were being harassed now when the ‘owner’ wasn’t being dealt with.
Story being told about the horses was first they were in their mid teens. Story then changed that they were in their mid-20s. THEN the story was, and all of this was by the owner, that they were all in their mid 30s???
Another story, again told by the owner was “they all had WNV, got it in 90s and it recurred every summer”…
Then she started posting photos of sacks of feed, that were in her barn that had cigarette butts in them…and telling stories on FB about her battles to save these poor horses…and how misunderstood she was…boo hoo. And yes, I saw the posts on FB that she wrote about how she was being harassed when only trying to save geriatric horses.
I called and called trying to get help for the horses, peta/hsus/shark…nothing. The 2 women were told they could not even mention the horses anywhere or anytime in conversation, online or else they would go to prison.
In the rounds of looking up this POS ‘owner’ I ran across a rescue in the area and called them, they had actually saved a colt out of the horse that had starved to death, but they couldn’t get the others, but they knew the person and they knew she was a nutcase. Also knew the daughter of this person too, who oddly enough didn’t know her mother had ‘lost 4 children’ to SIDS…including a set of twins that was almost 2 years old??? BS.
She killed those kids too, for sympathy, this was back in 80s maybe…there were AP articles about how the 2 remaining children had to wear some sort of vest to alert if they were dying. Some researcher supposedly discovered a reason for the other 4 dying…but I think that was BS…except it made her realize that her ‘poor me’ stories would not be believed anymore.
I lost track of the horses, don’t know what happened in the end. But made me realize all of the crying hsus/peta does is a lie. They do NOT care one whit for any animal…just the money.
That is so incredibly sad 
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As equally interesting, though less disturbing, is the person with the perpetual need to care for every horse at the barn. Horses that do not belong to them. Horses that are unsuitable for that person to handle. There are two woman at my barn who are clueless and timid but insist on handling the unbroken, barely touched 7 yr old mare because they feel bad for her. She gets fed and her feet get done. After seeing her pull back hard in the cross tie and freak out, yeah- leave her alone. No business doing that. Don’t even know if they have owner permission.
I appreciate good intentions, but some people need to back off and not make things about them.
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Oof those kind of people make me so uncomfortable, I can’t stand those that feel the need to poke around when it’s not their horse, its a huge risk to the horse in many casee. We have been looking to move barn because of a younger teen who is like that and her parents nor the barn manager do anything about it.
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I have a boarding barn that I recently closed because I was going away for awhile (I have staff). I was going to leave it open, but I have 2 horses on the property who are not suitable for novices to handle, and I had boarders who were wonderful but novices. I started to become very concerned that they would try to handle said horses to “help me while I was gone” and that gave me some nightmares, so…I closed the barn.
I don’t like anyone doing anything with my horses uninvited, even if it isn’t overtly “harmful”.
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Ha! I made this thread 7 years ago but this topic still intrigues me! People can and will do lots of things to garner attention, especially over social media. I see plenty of people who let animals linger who are sick and in pain to use it as a way to get attention. A lady at my barn put her horse down last summer and literally took photos of him going down and posted them on FB. Who does this??
Idk but I was taught less is more and humility goes a long way.
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Stupid “recommended post” feature got one of us again! 
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We have one at my barn who isn’t quite MBP, but a bit OCD so she thinks her horse is OCD. She cares about things waayyy more than her horse does.
A couple years ago I taught the gelding I had how to circle the stall for crackers. They had fireworks at a horse show, & we weren’t sure how a couple of them would be. This gelding wasn’t too bad, but he very quickly figured out that if he started circling in the stall, I’d call him to the front & give him a treat. Took me about 10 minutes to figure out he just wanted snacks. The next night, I just left him alone.
The OCD horse was doing more or less the same thing. She didn’t realize she was making him worse.
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Goats and cats also? What was she doing to them???
I don’t think I have ever met anyone intentionally causing harm to an animal for medical attention but I have definitely seen my fair share of owners who are constantly looking for something to be wrong with their horse. Almost like deep down they didn’t actually like the horse or were afraid of it and so they were looking for an out, but they couldn’t just admit they had picked poorly.
I wonder if MBP applies in Asombro’s case. To starve horses and then prop them up in weird makeshift slings is not the sign of someone mentally healthy.
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She kept cutting the cat’s whiskers completely off.
I believe she was performing some extreme “trim” on the goats’ feet, as well.
I may have trimmed my cat’s whiskers when I was about 5. Poor cat.
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She had a homemade Hannibal Lecter face mask that she’d put on the cats, and then she’d either Dremel their claws off or pull them out, I forget which.
