This is going to be very long, but if you could bear with me, this is an important story that needs to be told to horse owners everywhere. My mom wrote most of this, but I (Lindsey) am the one posting.
This is an account of our horrendous experience transporting our horse with Nation-Wide Horse Transportation, Inc. (abbreviated NWHT onward). In the months of June and July 2015, I had looked at many professional websites for horse transport companies. Even though I own a two-horse trailer, I was not feeling confident about trailering our horse, Elle, through the mountains from Ohio to Virginia. We were sending her to join our daughter, Lindsey, at The Barracks Farm in Charlottesville, where she attends school and is a member of the University of Virginia IHSA riding team. Lindsey was beyond excited to have Elle come down for the school year.
After spending quite a bit of time looking, the only company that had the dates I was looking for open was Nation-Wide Horse Transportation. I was looking to book for the 1-10 of Sept. If you visit their website, you will notice that they promise they are an “industry leader in providing safe and dependable equine shipping for more than four decades” and that “you can be confident when you ship with Nation-Wide that your horse will be taken good care of”. I filled out an online request form and received a call from David, the route supervisor from NWHT. He said they could do the 10th. I was advised by David that a single stall would be fine for a trip of this length. I learned later that a box stall would have been a much better choice for the horse’s comfort on a trip this long.
A few days before the 1st of September, I got a call from David. He said pick-up would be on Saturday the 5th, and not the 10th as I was previously told. I asked a lot of questions about the route. Where it would go, how many stops, how many horses and how long it would take? I was told a day and a half, and that the route was unavailable to me for privacy matters of the other customers. In hindsight, this seemed like a red flag.
On Friday the 4th, David called and said pick up in Delaware, Ohio would be between 1-5 pm the next day. Delivery would be early Monday morning and I would get a call when the drivers were one hour out. I was promised two drivers so that they could drive overnight, one resting while the other drove, with stops every five hours for the horses to rest and to be fed, watered, and checked for signs of stress.
I was at the barn getting Elle ready the following day (Saturday) when the one hour call came, and the trailer was there by 2:00pm. Rob and Travis were the drivers. I can’t say that I was not concerned about the state of the trailer. It looked old and not very well maintained, and there were no shavings on the floor of the trailer to absorb urine and give more cushion for the horses’ feet. The single stall I was told was appropriate was very small. It worried me, but Rob said she would be in Virginia by Sunday. I asked again for the route they were taking, and he said they would go to Pennsylvania and New York, then on to Virginia. Later I learned that they also went to New Jersey to pick up a horse before going to Virginia.
After speaking to Lindsey, I knew Elle had not arrived on Sunday. I called NWHT and talked to Kathryn. She said she would get an update and call me with information first thing Monday morning. She assured me that if there was any problem with my horse, the drivers would call me. She also said that if someone told me the trip would take only a day and a half, they had misspoken. She offered her apologies.
Monday the 7th I did not get a call so I called the main company number. No answer, so I tried a few more times before leaving a message. Still no call. After a few more tries I left a less polite message. I was starting to be very worried and was picturing an accident, my horse injured or worse on the highway. Later that afternoon, I was looking through my email when I found a message from Kathryn. It had never been stated that any communication would be through email, so I had not thought to check. I had been told I would get a call if there were problems. The email informed me that there had been a breakdown, but that all horses were doing fine. Lots of apologies for the delay, and for not calling. She was too busy to answer all of the calls. Delivery would now be Tuesday morning between 8am -12pm, much later than the originally quoted Sunday or Monday morning. As soon as I read the mail, I sent a reply and asked to please talk to the driver, as I had no phone number. My barn manager in Ohio had asked for a number and was told they were not allowed to give it out. Kathryn said she would have him call me.
Later that evening I got a call from Rob. He sounded distraught and a bit hysterical. He said that it had been the trip from hell, with everything that could go wrong going wrong. He told me that first he broke his brakes hitting a pothole. Then they kept giving him wrong directions, and that he had driven three times to the wrong address and then had to turn around and go clear across town. Also, that he was down for six hours when he ended up in a driveway that he couldn’t turn around in, causing him to wait for a tow truck. He stated that he hadn’t eaten in 14 hours or had a shower in 9 days. I would consider such a situation as a very strong reason to call all horse owners. The temperatures were in the 90s that weekend with two separate times where the trailer was not moving for hours. Those horses needed to come off of the trailer and the owners were never given the option to intervene and make alternate arrangements or decisions. When I inquired about the other driver, Rob said that Travis wasn’t driving, but would not say where he was. I later learned that he left the vehicle further along in the trip, just before it returned to Colorado Springs due to his need to not be apart of the “abuse” that was going on.
Rob called at 7:30am the next morning and told me he was an hour out. He said he had called The Barracks and just got a voicemail. I got ahold of the barn manager and asked her to call me as soon as Elle was unloaded. I was very concerned with her condition. According to the barn manager, Rob drove the trailer past the two large barns and down the driveway to the house next door, where he again could not get turned around. He had to drive over the lawn to finally do it, with the assistance of the barn staff.
Even before she was unloaded the barn manager and the owner of the farm recognized that Elle was in very bad shape. The vet was called immediately. She called me about 15 minutes later to tell me that Elle was in shock, had pneumonia, dehydration, and a mild impaction. Her heart rate was 100, where normal is 40, and a temperature of 103, where normal is 101. She said it would be best to transport her to the equine hospital as soon as they got some fluids in her. At no point had Nation-Wide either noticed or cared that our horse was clearly in distress and decided to seek help for her or contact us. She clearly had not been given nearly enough water or checked on at all and had been standing with her head tied up for much longer than was comfortable, never able to clear debris from her throat by coughing, which accounts for the pneumonia.
I was in touch with Dr. Trostle at Blue Ridge Equine Clinic on Tuesday after she was transported there. He did not offer much optimism about her condition. Her heart rate was still 100 and the pneumonia was now causing hemorrhaging in her lungs. The IV fluids were collecting in her chest wall instead of being absorbed. I felt sick to my stomach over how awful the last three days must have been for her. I couldn’t stop picturing her in that trailer, cramped into a small space, dehydrated, in sweltering heat when not in motion, and scared and having trouble breathing due to the pneumonia.
Lindsey went to see Elle Tuesday afternoon after her classes. She watched them do a tracheal wash to determine what type of bacteria was causing her pneumonia. She was extremely concerned and scared on the phone after the visit, and reported that her horse was still moving around, but was clearly distressed and having trouble breathing. Her heart rate was still elevated, though the vets and Lindsey did see it come down a little at one point. The horse had noticeably lost some weight and lied down towards the end of the visit out of exhaustion. This was nothing like the happy and healthy horse Lindsey had left at home.
Wednesday morning I decided I needed to be in Virginia to support my daughter. When I arrived in Charlottesville that night I picked up Lindsey and we went to see Elle. At this point, Elle had her front feet bandaged, and we were told that this was due to some lameness that had begun to show itself over the last day. The vet was going to do radiographs to determine if there was an abscess, a fracture, or laminitis. Elle was visibly limping and having difficulty moving around. She seemed agitated and tired and wanted to lay down but could not because of the immense pain and stress it put on her front feet to do that. She was bleeding from her nostrils and could not eat.
On Thursday the news was not good. The pneumonia was progressing to more spots on both lungs. Her heart rate still 100, and breathing was difficult due to all the fluid collecting in her chest wall. She was still bleeding from her nose. She now also had a laminitis in her front hooves. They had deeply bedded her stall and put her in cushioned ice boots. She was having trouble moving around. She would not lie down because it would be too painful to get back up. They had placed Fentanyl patches on both legs for pain control, but she was trembling from fatigue and pain. She would hardly move a step and simply swayed in place. Her breathing was audibly shallow and you could hear the fluid in her lungs when you put your head to her neck. Dr. Trostle said there was some rotation of the bone in both hooves. If this rotation doesn’t get too severe, there can be recovery from laminitis. I had to bring up euthanasia with Lindsey. We agonized over it for a while but still held some hope that her condition could improve with the antibiotics. It was already clear that her future as a show horse was unlikely, but we hoped to save her and give her a longer life of happiness. The doctor was waiting to go home and when I said we were planning to wait another day in hopes the antibiotics would start to effect a positive change, he made it clear that we might lose her overnight without putting in a chest tube to drain fluid from her lungs. They took 12 liters of fluid off of her chest that night.
The call in the morning was not what we had hoped for. Both front hooves were “sinking”, the bones rotating downward and threatening to push through the bottom of the sole of the foot. There was no possibility of her recovering enough to even live a life in a pasture, and she was in incredible pain. We cried and heartbreakingly chose to euthanize Elle to end her suffering.
I was told by this company (both David and Kathryn) that the drivers would call if there were any problems with my horse. This was a perfectly healthy horse that had competed successfully in shows all summer long. I don’t think her condition could have suddenly deteriorated to be as severe as it was upon arrival. Obviously the driver could not have been checking on her or appropriately caring for, much less calling owners as promised if any problems occurred.
My family and I have spent the last eleven months seeking ramifications for Nation-Wide and trying to force the company to take responsibility for their actions. We have hit wall after wall and have been redirected countless times within the legal system, law enforcement agencies, and government regulatory departments. No one has been able to follow through with helping us, so I’m now going to tell this story publicly in the hopes that it can be shared with everyone and no one else will have to go through this nightmare. Nation-Wide did not contact us at all during or after this happened until we made contact with them several months later. They have denied any blame or wrongdoing whatsoever. The company was only willing to give us $1000 in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement that would have kept me from doing exactly what I’m doing right now. That money would’ve been a token amount compared to Elle’s value, the vet bills we accrued, and the suffering they caused. Since Elle’s death, we have discovered internet stories of many other horses that have been injured during transport by Nation-Wide, including horses on the same trip as Elle. This horse had several issues including puncture wounds with infections, and burned or rubbed areas all over her back end. She also had an injury to one leg, as if it had fallen through the floor of the trailer. We regret everyday that we didn’t look for these past stories sooner.
In closing, I would like to add that this young horse had been carefully and methodically brought along in her training for four years. My daughter, Lindsey, was fifteen years old when we got her. Lindsey put in hundreds of hours of hard work with our trainer, and thousands of dollars in training fees, to achieve the solid, consistent, and well trained horse that Elle had become. She was a sweet, kind and loving horse that is not easily replaced.
There is a post on Facebook telling an abbreviated version of this story, and if you would like to share it to help publicize what happened so that other horse owners do not have to go through this, the link is here:
https://www.facebook.com/lindsey.decker.7/posts/1199052933492036
Sorry if this sounds like an ad, but I am just expressing that the big dogs are not always the best way to go.