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They really ARE yearlings. The two boys we bought last fall and the filly we acquired in a rather round about story...and fun.

The easiest way to tell the tale is to post an entry to a diary I keep:

I scammed a con artist last week.

The breeders we bought our lovely boys from contacted me about a Georgia buyer who had bounced two of three checks for the three foals she had purchased. They asked for my help collecting and although the case was complicated by the 700 miles that separate me from her and the thousands of miles that separate the breeder from all of us, I agreed to bone up on Georgia law and send her a certified letter, two in fact, demanding payment and warning of dire consequences. I enlisted the help of an attorney friend in GA although it was more for name recognition than anything else, knowing the cost of litigation would be prohibitive.

When this woman didn’t pick up her letters, it was time to re-think the straight and narrow approach and I did some searching. Found this buyer had a website proclaiming her love of horses, her undying devotion to rescuing horses in need, declaring her 501(c)(3) status, begging for money and also offering for sale for outrageous money the three foals she stole .

Having gotten the flavor of this woman, I checked my alternate email addy for any identifying info and satisfied it was clean, joined this woman’s group as “Leo”. I chatted for a day or two and finally expressed interest in one of the foals. I let that hang for a day or two and then emailed her off site, asserting concern that I not disrupt her board by inquiring on the board why the same foals, same pictures, same names appeared on another site from Canada, and that her name was also listed on the site as being a horrid customer…if she didn’t mind my asking.

She didn’t. She gave me a story about how her best friend wanted these foals and asked her to keep them till she had her own place. She was merely stuck in the middle when her best friend split and she hadn’t heard from her and didn’t know her whereabouts. Uh huh! Her best friend just happened to be an alias that she had used with the breeders but she didn’t know I knew…I was Leo after all.

Feigning understanding ‘having been in the situation where a friend had stuck me’, I offered a solution (a farce really, but cleared by the Canada folks) that I would pay for the one filly directly to them (which I wouldn’t) and she would transfer the filly to me, and then owe only the difference to Canada. The breeders sent me the appropriate email acknowledging receipt of the “wire transfer”, approving the deal; promising to remove derogatory info from their website and to discontinue any legal proceedings if the difference was given to me in cash when I picked up the baby, ostensibly to wire the same to them. The woman bit and blessed me for getting involved. I knew she knew Canada was on her case as I (not Leo) had sent her two certified letters to two different addresses and she never picked them up…she sensed they were after her.

Originally the plan was just to get the filly out of the south and board her till we could arrange some sort of shipping arrangements back to the breeder. As soon as I informed them that the “deal” had been struck, they emailed me that they were so grateful to have prevented this woman from basic horse theft that we could have the filly for free as payment for collecting the balance and stopping this woman from “getting away with it”!!

L and I immediately cleared our schedules since we didn’t know how much time we had till this woman caught on. The filly’s picture was outrageous…gorgeous! G remembered her as one she had also wanted and this was too good to pass up. A long trip for all of us, but what fun thinking we had conned the con.

There was that brief period where I reined in my gloating as the realization that I may have driven 700+ miles on the word of a con artist came to the fore. Pride has a habit of smacking you in the face just to get your attention.

There was also the problem of using my pseudonym with her. I am such a talker I had to be careful not to blow the cover…tough one that.

Driving up the dirt road to the well appointed home, I searched the 25 or so horses in the newly constructed paddocks; most sad looking, but then they WERE rescue horses, weren’t they? I met this gal at the end of the walk and only briefly stumbled over my name. She seemed friendly enough but trembled as we signed papers despite the 50-degree morning and offered, as she thanked me for intervening, that her problems were the result of an ongoing divorce…new story.

I searched the lots for the filly and when a large bouncing youngster came running down the paddock I was sure it was her, till I noticed she was a he. I was taken to a ramshackle supposedly temporary stall where the once magnificent filly was barely visible over the stall gate. She was 2/3 the size of her brothers in my barn, shy, long coated despite the arrived spring of the South. She had longish feet, a totally bleached blond tail where it should have been deep black. Her mane was long and brittle and I would never have paired her with her pic but for the unusual half star on her forehead and the symmetrical blaze that ran down her face to tickle her nose.

So shocked was I that I struggled to maintain composure to pull the filly away from this person. The filly came hesitantly at first and then totally willingly. Approaching the trailer I prayed for few problems. I had no idea how she would load and the trailer ramp was on uneven ground, making it wobble when stepped on. This motion defeats many loading attempts as even seasoned horse travelers caution at the movement underfoot. This filly walked up the ramp and straight for the new hay as though she hadn’t eaten in days. We locked it up, got directions and the cash and left. The more we talked, the angrier L and I became. We saw the other two foals she purchased from Canada and although not as pathetic, they were nothing, I mean nothing like our foals although all the same age and related to L’s and mine.

At the first stop we tended to the filly who was cautious but hauling like a trooper. We spent several minutes with her in the trailer and on the inspection we forewent just to escape, found the filly to be severely malnourished and wormy; there was no muscle or meat on her frame, you could count her ribs and bruise yourself on her protruding hip bones. Apparently in an attempt to hide her condition, the bitch had sprayed “show sheen” on her rough coat to make her appear “shiny” and thus healthy. Obviously she hasn’t dealt with many people with any knowledge of horses if she thought shine over ribs would signify health.

More discussion and L and I realized how poorly all the horses were, not all of which could be explained by their rescue status. I had seen the three foals she supposedly “rescued” but purchased from Canada when we picked ours up. I know what they looked like. I also knew that some of the supposed rescues had been on other sites as rescues months ago. Apparently this woman, as best we can surmise, “rescues” horses, begs for 501(c)(3) donations to foster her wards and then spends the money appointing her home and bejeweling her boyfriend who happened to be there when we arrived. (She told us she had to leave by 9:30 and we didn’t leave her place till 10:15…guess the boyfriend was supposed to arrive at 9:30).

Twelve hours in a truck can jog the memory of what you took in peripherally; can reprint the mental notes that you filed as you played your part in the mini-drama. The one that most pointedly hit me around North Carolina was the silence…the utter silence as we left. After 33 years of horse ownership, I have never arrived at a farm with a horse or left with a horse, even one despised by the others, where they didn’t whinny back and forth as the trailer ramp closed and the truck inched down the drive. There’s ALWAYS a whinny, always. Not that day. Not from the trailer. Not from the paddocks. Not from the dozen or so foals she shared an unsheltered paddock with. Not from her brother or sister she spent the whole of her 10 month life with. I didn’t understand the depth of Lecter’s phrase of “the silence of the lambs” until I heard the silence of the foals.