Posted on 12/30/2005 3:19:33 PM PST by N. Beaujon
(CBS) MAHOPAC A Mahopac woman faces charges of animal cruelty for allegedly beating an 11-year-old horse - by hitting it in the head with a chain. The Putnam County Sheriff's department is charging 20-year-old Anna Nicole Bruno with animal assault.
Bruno, the horse's owner, used to ride Colby in equestrian events and has been ranked high in dressage competition by the U.S. Equestrian Association. http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_361084925.html
(Excerpt) Read more at wcbstv.com ...
You're a great heart, and I can appreciate your outrage about this incident, but what you're really saying above is if you can't apply the really aggressive methods with a dangerous horse, sell it to someone who can (and you just won't have to see it). Short of that, send the horse to the trainer who can fix it and you don't have to ask what they did.
Agreed, in principle, although the trainer we sent our bad pony to wouldn't let us come watch the first week.... the lady said she needed all her concentration and didn't need to be worried about how we were feeling.
Heh... She out-bucked the pony somehow in the first week :~D
I ~think~ what she did was tie a sack of aluminum cans to her and let her run and buck herself to exhaustion in the round pen. Not pretty, but neither was the kid getting bucked off the pony all the time :~D.
For the most part, I agree with everything you've said. I don't use stud chains or twitches, I leave that to the vet if he needs it. I don't buy horses that will need that type of restraint when I'm handling them on a day to day basis.
Have you ever seen some of the bits and training devices people use? I've seen bits that look like torture devices. There is no end to the way you can be cruel to animals. That is why I think this girl should be given the benefit of the doubt, until we know more. She's going to have an amazing amount of backlash, will likely be kicked out of the Dressage Federation, have a ton of legal bills, all because she lost her temper. It could have been competely out of character for her, we just don't know. She'll be punished, no doubt, but there are tons of cruelties going on daily, things that on the surface don't appear cruel.
She probably thought it would freak you out and she is right about the concentration. Some of those poor horsie, tree huggers have a problem when the horse's reaction becomes "exhuberant". All she did is let the horse teach himself. I am a big believer in setting up the situation so that the horse teaches himself (safely of course!).
Correction training, such as with your pony, is the hardest of all. It is so much easier to teach them the right way from a clean slate than it is to overcome existing issues. I'd rather train a wild mustang from scratch than a horse that others have screwed up mentally. The wild mustang is a "pure" horse and you know how he is going to respond. Horses that have been mentally messed up are completely unpredictable.
Stud chains under the chin are vital with a horse who knows how strong they are. When we got Cyn, after she yarded us around the first day or two leading somewhere, she got a stud chain for awhile every time we led her.
I can't stand being pulled around or yanked around by a horse that wants to stop and eat, or look around, or whatever. I'd rather use a harsher means softly (stud chain under the chin) than a soft means harshly, yanking repeatedly at the halter.
Do ya'll ever watch "Animal Cops"? Un-friggin-believable what people will do deliberately. That's why I'm not passing judgment on someone who likely acted from loss of temper.
Absolutely. Being dragged around is highly dangerous. Tuffy used to drag me around but I worked with him using a rope halter. If that hadn't of worked, I'd have gone to a chain.
Good grief, what a story. Had I been the owner of those horses, I'm not sure if I would have been able to keep MY temper in check. You were right to let them know how their horses were treated. They might have used that woman again.
Passing judgement is not always a negative thing. I will state that IMHO, what she did was wrong, loss of temper or not. But, she is young and perhaps has never been taught properly herself. My hope is that she learns the right lessons from this experience and modifies HER behavior in the future.
Unfortunately, if she had the trust of this horse before, she has damaged it severely, or even completely lost it. Horses never forget what they have learned, for good or for bad. And, she just confirmed for this horse that whatever it was she was trying to do, was a bad thing and to be avoided in the future because he got punished for it.
You did the right thing, Hair. I am glad that you had the courage and fortitude to do it. Most people just pass by and either never notice, or think "someone should do something" but don't take action themselves.
I have seen many bad, bad situations in rescue. I am certainly not naive about what people can and will do. So, I thank you on behalf of those horses, those owners, and all my rescue friends who would applaud your involvement as well.
That's the unintended consequence of our misguided losses of temper. Stand still for clippers? No way! Every time you bring those things around me you beat the crap out of me!
Still around Becky? :~D
She should have a police record for all that. It's really nice of you to keep tabs on her, somebody sure needs to.
I was reading a book written by a vet, telling of his experiences. One story was a horse that was kept in a small, dry round pen that had tons of green grass on the outside of the pen. The owner called the vet out because the horse wasn't doing well. The vet immediately sized up the situation, seeing that all the horse had to eat was some moldy hay. Told the owner to let the horse out on the grass. The vet went out a few weeks later to check on the horse and the horse had died. All around the outside of the round pen you could see where the horse had eaten down the grass he could get to. He had starved to death. The vet said that was the maddest he's ever been.
Oops, that sentence should have had "insert object" in the middle of it between time and brought. Unfortunately, I used HTML characters ("< >") and the forum software interpreted them differently!
Well, I got backup so it didn't just turn into a girly shouting match. Bob was a cop for a lot of years, and he's an intimidating force to be reckoned with.
He didn't argue with her at all. He calmly said "I'll be back here in an hour. I want to see hay in that barn and a new water hose and that water tub FULL when I get back or you're going to jail." And he meant it. He gave her a few days to get a shoer there, and we both followed up with that. She panicked at first and thought she'd just go get dairy grain and fatten them right up. She'd have killed them for sure if we hadn't been there to manage it, and get a vet there too to look for signs of trouble.
I think what happened is that when she put the horses in there, it was overgrown and there was more than adequate pasture, within months though, they'd eaten it down to dirt and she long stopped noticing them.
First we get her attention with a 2X4 to the head.
Hey, I can pass judgment with the best of the boys. ;)
What this girl did was wrong, we all agree on that. Hopefully, this was an isolated incident, totally out of character. I just don't think jail time is the answer here, without doing some digging. If she has made a habit out of beating her horses until they need stitches, jailtime might be the way to go. If it was out of character, perhaps all the backlash she is receiving is punishment enough.
It's in the papers and being discussed by people like us all over the country. There's a petition being signed by strangers. Pretty humiliating for a prima dona.
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