Meanwhile, back at the barn.

[Arcus]

If you can prove that her actions led to the death of your mare, SUE HER! Not to get the money, but to get justice for your mare. This.... monster needs to pay for what she did.

[Blue Ginger]

Sending hugs and virtual cookies. And sugar cubes for the foals.

When you have a chance, I second having the value of the poor mare, vet bills and additional bills for the care of the foals added to the legal side of this too.

This @%$&%(^%@ should never be allowed near animals. And should be locked up.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Aww, poor mare! Are you hand rearing her foals now?

I agree with everyone who said to sue the bitch. After all, it's her fault that the mare is dead and her babies are orphaned.

[Rosco the Iroc]

(insert banned and arrestable comments and suggestions to do to her here)

[Jay 2K Winger]

I have no words that are appropriate for this board.

I'm sorry for those foals. Go after the crazy bitch for this.

[kibbles]

I say let all the charges stick..the years that come with it..so be it!

[AkaiKitsune]

For those of you telling me to after the bitch. Believe I am.
Yes, I'm hand rearing the goals and damn to they ever need constant milk. Seriously, like bottomless pits there. I'm also getting help from friends up there as I'm boarding them almost an hrs drive from where I live. (And I don't have a car so bus it is) I would likely have had to hand raise them anyway given the mare wasn't producing enough milk for both of them anyways. So at least they're already used to being bottle fed some of the time.

For those offering condolences, thank you. But understand that she had been abused enough that it was unlikely she would be able to ever be comfortable with humans again. She would never be able to be ridden, showed, or even been able to be put in a stall overnight. It took ages to get her to a point that she could be groomed without a sedative. Any sudden movement would spook her and then you had no choice but to let her be for a few hours while she worked through it. She couldn't be haltered or a blanket put on her because even that small amount of restriction panicked her. At best she would only have been able to handle being groomed by someone she already knew or left in the field. (Without being worked she would have then likely developed ulcers, possibly lameness, Abscesses [we get a kid of rain here and some of the lower elevation parts of the field get very muddy], thrush, rainscald [yes there are shelter but the horses don't always use them] or mud fever).

The one time we managed to coax her into a halter she panicked and threw herself against the round pen walls until the vet was able to tranquilize her. And sudden or loud noise startled her (including the phone going off inside the house). While she was getting better at not freaking out at ever twitch or gust of wind she never would have fully recovered. On top of that, due to the late discovery of her pregnancy (which couldn't be safely aborted at that point) we were forced to take her off many of her meds or provide safer (but not as effective) alternatives. Bottom line is that despite all efforts she was suffering psychologically and physically. Although physically she might have been able to mostly recover, mentally she would not have been able to handle much in regards to being handled.

While there was definitely a marked improvement towards the end of her pregnancy (she could stand to be around people and even seemed to enjoy their company so long as they didn't touch her. And even then she would just hover out of reach of the kids at the fence.) and after the foals were born (she would bring them up to the fence for us or to show off to the more frequent and quieter kids. Though she would get antsy if anyone touched them but so long as it was the foals going to the humans and not the other way around she wouldn't take her kids away. Except on bad days where she just stood in the middle of the field with her foals. The kids were told in advance not to approach first (not that all of them listened) but she was never aggressive towards people. Her mindset was to escape uncomfortable situations not attack.).

The only time she showed aggression was when we tried to put a halter on the foals. That is likely a hold over from the abuse she suffered. After all, if she'd associated a halter with restraint and abuse being done to her why the hell would she let someone put one on her babies? Her mind would have jumped to what had been done to her and then applied the same experience to her knowledge. Halter=pain, foals+halter, foals+halter=pain. As an animal (no matter how loveable or intelligent) she would not have been able to consider that since we hadn't harmed her yet that maybe we didn't intend to harm her and that because we never intended her harm perhaps her previous experience was wrong and that applying the same outcomes to certain actions would not necessarily be correct. If we had ever managed to get her into a halter without her freaking out so bad and been able to teach her a halter doesn't necessarily mean pain is coming, she might have been able to give us the benifit of the doubt. But to her it looked as though we meant harm to her babies and she understandably reacted accordingly. While a horse can anticipate an action to another action (Ie doing something and getting a treat or doing something and getting a reprimand) based on prior experience. (If you give a horse a treat every time he bows when you tap his shoulder he will assume that if she taps my shoulder and I do this, I get this carrot half) They can't understand that another horse being tapped on the shoulder might mean something entirely different or nothing at all unless they see it. But I'm going on a tangent.

Bottom line she was not going to get much better then she had been before the episode with crazy lady made her flashback to everything previous. In fact after the foals were weaned there was a strong likely hood of having to put her down as after the episode she had become a danger to everyone and herself. The happy illusion that she might not have believed but had been able to cautiously accept as a possibility had been entirely shattered. It wasn't a matter of 'okay nothing bad has happened yet maybe, just maybe nothing will. Maybe there are humans that won't hurt me.' It was now a matter of 'I haven't been hurt here yet. But then I was. It's possible to be hurt here. I have to protect myself. I have to protect my young. They don't know pain/danger is possible here.' The next logical leap for the mare was 'get them before they get my babies.' She had already shut down mentally and with her history it was unlikely to be possible to bring her back from that edge a second time. The first time she was looking to move forward and accepted the change as a matter of 'anything is better then that'. This time it want at a drastic change of scenery/owners/circumstances it was a return towards previous (and still uncertain about) experience of what had happened after she left her abusers up until her babies had been threatened. Going the way she was we would have had no choice but to put her down by law if she attacked her regular handlers after that point. The province would have labeled her as a risk to life and limb at that point and in this case would have been right. Even had she lived she would have been in a constant state of just on the edge of flight or fight. Either possible at any provocation. Even before she dropped foal, something as ordinary as glancing (glancing not staring. Predators stare.) in her eyes was enough to have her ears back in discomfort and fear.

At least now she's hopefully at peace and where she'll never be looking over her shoulder for the next strike to come.

The foals are fine. A little distressed that mom's gone but we have a surrogate that has been used for years for the the emotional aspect (even if she's not capable of the feeding them aspect)

[Ben_Who]

Anger is cathartic stuff, isn't it?

It was asked several posts ago about the kind of example this woman was providing for her daughter. I think cooling her jets in the Big House over multiple felony charges is all the example that poor girl needs. One hates to think of her deprived of a mother for the duration of the sentence, but if this is the mother she's being deprived of, it's probably for the best.

Somehow judgment goes out the window when we feel we're owed.

[EricKei]

I feel sorry for the poor creature (meaning the horse, not the beast who did her wrong). Hopefully, she's found peace now.

[rose_metal_nz]

I have no adequate words. I am so sorry for your loss, and hope that the horrible woman gets what she deserves for her role.

[Minflick]

Would it be possible to get a goat to provide milk for the foals? I know it's been done in some situations (I've seen extensive pictures of a doe up on a stand so a Clydesdale foal could nurse), and I knew a goat herd owner who was sharing goat milk to a foal whose dam had died from a snake bite.

[wordgirl]

AkaiKitsune, I know you must be heartbroken. Though intellectually I'm sure you knew the mare's chances of recovery were slim, I can see from the amount of time, care and love you lavished on her that you were hoping for a miracle, and it's so sad that even that long shot was taken away from her.

[Mytical]

(insert banned and arrestable comments and suggestions to do to her here)

^ This. Everything else was bad enough, but the fact that this .. thing (the SC I mean) is allowed to roam free and the mare has passed because of her .. is just WRONG.

[greek_jester]

...but the fact that this .. thing (the SC I mean) is allowed to roam free and the mare has passed because of her .. is just WRONG.

The thing (as you so aptly called her) is not roaming free. She's banged up pending trial.

Not much to say. The nutter is in a cell and last I heard they were trying to figure out a way to get all the charges against her without it turning into life in prison simply from the amount of time attached to some of the charges. Some of them have a you have to do XX amount of time period before we even look at letting you go and others can only be served consecutively instead of blending it into one big time chunk. I love my lawyer. He's a bit of an ass sometimes to deal with but he's so damn good at what he does.

[EricKei]

AK - Not sure what the proper legal term is, but maybe your lawyer could look into requesting that the sentences be served simultaneously (as opposed to consecutively)...? The net effect being that they only really serve the sentence for the conviction/charge with the longest sentence actually applied by the judge, and the others are (presumably) just there to make her ineligible for parole until they have all run their course.

If y'all have this well-documented and have the woman dead to rights, it might be worth it to offer her a plea deal -- e.g., She formally confesses to the one with the longest sentence and everything else gets dropped once she does so. Pretty typical tactic to secure a conviction, and it can save you an enormous amount of time and money.