OK, here’s your thread – Let’s talk about Serenity/Cavalia
Jul 23 2010
I’ll start. Let’s talk about Serenity Equine Rescue, home of accidental pregnancies, and the associated Cavalia Arabian horse breeding program.
Why in the hell is that supposed to be:
a)Â Good enough to keep intact?
b)Â Worth $7500?
Does it know how to do anything? Has it ever been to a horseshow?  Of any kind? I looked him up on Datasource. He’s four. He was bred by Rae Smith, who coincidentally is allegedly the person who subleased Patricia’s piece of crap unapproved Friesian stallion out to the girl who had the barbed wire fence (who had just had a mare die from getting tangled in it) without telling Patricia. I don’t know exactly what went down there but apparently Patricia hustled out and got him after that pic popped up on the blog!
What we have here is a Polish cross, four year old stallion who seems destined to follow in the footsteps of his totally unaccomplished recent ancestors. Sure, he’s got some great horses way back – Cytosk+++, *Karadjordje+++ – but they are way back. We’ve talked a million times about how famous horses way back doesn’t make a horse marketable today. Oh, and if that horse is 15 hands, I will eat my computer mouse. Short Arabians: not very marketable, don’t win in today’s show ring. He is a cute gelding – that’s what he is. And they don’t sell for $7500.
I have absolutely no problem with someone being in rescue and also, separately having a breeding program. But if you’re in rescue, that should be all the more reason that you don’t breed things that won’t sell for lots of money. You should be horrified enough by the things you see on a day to day basis to not risk producing any horse that is going to be at high risk. You should be committed to showing or otherwise seriously competing and aggressively driving up the value of your stallion(s) and mares and therefore your resulting foals — because you have PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE of what happens when you don’t!
Patricia calls herself a successful Arabian breeder on the SERR page. Really?  Can anyone name one successful horse she’s bred? If by successful, you mean successful in merely producing foals, well, a lot of people manage to pull that off, don’t they now? It’s like when people call something a “proven” stallion just because it proved it can knock mares up. Not exactly rare. And I really don’t see how she can claim to be “educated in all aspects of running a succesful [SIC] rescue farm” when she is having accidental foals. C’mon, that is a pretty basic aspect!
So, yeah, Patricia has bred a lot of mediocrity here, to begin with. Then there is the fact that the mediocrity has gotten numerous rescue mares pregnant. And then there’s the fact that her entire board has left the rescue because they were sick of her not getting vet care for horses and managing money poorly. This is why people talk a lot of shit about her. It’s not because they are meanies or defaming her or whatever. It’s because those are the facts.
I started looking askance at her a few years ago because of the repeated Craigslist pleas that they were in desperate need of hay. I mean, come on. Hay is basic. If you can’t buy hay, I know you are not UTD on feed and deworming, much less vet. And what does Patricia spend money on? Well, for one, trying to drag her former board members to court and get a restraining order because they dare to discuss her online (she got laughed out of court on that one). Um, maybe you ought to buy hay instead of filing frivolous legal proceedings?
To me it just comes down to something I’ve said before: it rarely works for rescue to be your job. It only works if you have (a) a wealthy spouse or (b) are SUPER organized and have a great board and know how to get and keep volunteers and are a pro at fundraising. Very, very few people fit into category (b). Most of the decent rescues are run by employed people who have well paid jobs. If a rescue doesn’t have that, then let’s face it — there is no safety net. None, nada, zip, zilch. It’s not like you can get Nobody Donated This Month Insurance. And boy, I sure hope she has liability, because her genius idea of having all of the horses in the ring at one time for Bribe Your Horse class is an Darwin award in the making!
I’ll also take this opportunity to observe that the rescuers I know that have jobs are generally a heck of a lot more pleasant to deal with than the ones who don’t. Getting off the farm and going to an office and having to behave like a civilized human being, work well with others in a team and, you know, take a shower every day does a lot to preserve one’s sanity. Sure, there are exceptions – but this is true more often than not.
Bottom line, there are much better rescues in Washington state to support. I hope nobody gives her a dime to fund her production line of grade part-Arabs, and I certainly wouldn’t advise attending her last-ditch attempt to raise some money horseshow next month. Go to the SAFE show and back up a quality rescue that has had zero unplanned pregnancies, zero OMG WE’RE OUT OF HAY crises, and has a Board of Directors with j-o-b-s.
193 comments to “OK, here’s your thread – Let’s talk about Serenity/Cavalia”
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amen.
Unplanned pregnancies at a RESCUE = Total fail.
Hay emergencies ALSO = total fail. Horses eat predictably, there should NEVER be a hay emergency. Especially given the need to gradually switch.
I am so tired of horse drama. It gives us such a bad name.
I know this post and discussion is really old, but I’m both a fan of The Fugly and have volunteered at Serenity since 2010 so I’m trying to get my $0.02 in near the top of the comments. Apologies, madchickenlittle, this comment is for everyone and not just you!
This post and the comments completely glaze over the hard work of Patricia and Serenity’s volunteers. Patricia has not only dedicated her private property and retirement to a rescue operation, but is constantly advocating for more responsible horse treatment, particularly in the racing industry. She has even been fighting the Baze family (see Fugly’s posts if you want a tiny glimpse into the cruelty that seems to run in the Baze family tree and throughout Emerald Downs in general) in court!
So indeed, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and trash an organization that continues to do a lot for the wellbeing of horses. I would hope no prospective donor googled the rescue and made a decision based on this post. I hope Fugly takes its responsibility to lead online discourse seriously and realizes the implications of posts like this and the effects they can have. While it’s easy to slag off a BYB on craigslist who clearly neglects their horses as evidenced by photos of starving animals, this was a lazy post that invited a lot of vitriol and gossip instead of promoting a balanced conversation. Go out and see the place for yourself and talk to Patricia and the board in person before deciding to paint Serenity as an unworthy cause.
That said, I think people have brought up a lot of legit criticism of the way Serenity is managed. It is a sloppy affair, and there are a few things I’d like to see done differently. I’ve seen a fair share of irresponsible decisions in terms of spending money on grain and shavings, and taking on more horses than the board approved and that can be properly supervised with Serenity’s limited capacity. However, if the main allegations made in the post and comments were true, I can say things have changed.
All horses on the property are gelded and any new studs get snipped the moment the vet can come out, so that situation seems to be under control. I wasn’t around when any of the alleged pregnancies happened so I can’t comment and won’t claim that it definitely didn’t happen. I am somewhat familiar with Sequoia and Keona, who’s owners say they adopted her, took her elsewhere, and then suspected she was pregnant and brought her back to board at Serenity, where she foaled Keona. Sequoia’s owners adopted Keona as well. Both still board at the farm. The Fresian is gelded and well trained.
Since I have been there, there has never been a hay shortage, nor can I see Patricia letting things get that bad. She may not run the place as well as it could be done, but she cares about the horses more than anything. If anything, they’re overfed. A craigslist appeal could very well have been a rogue volunteer deciding it would be helpful to post.
The fencing is high-tensile and hot wire and I’ve never seen a horse get out except when there was a power outage and the hot wire was off.
Criticizing Patricia for not having a job when she is well into retirement age is just mean and shitty. She has her own money and she spends a lot of it on the rescue. She doesn’t take a paycheck from it.
The board is still a little volatile, mainly because Patricia makes decisions on her own sometimes when she should consult the board, but for the most part it’s a stable core group that is heavily involved in daily operations. I’ve talked to multiple former board members who still volunteer and they say there was a disagreement a couple of years ago that split the board. The members who left took things personally and started going out of their way to ruin Serenity’s reputation wherever they could, including online. I don’t see any incentive for them to make this up.
There are multiple trainers who help with the horses. A few have gone under saddle and been adopted out in the past year, like BellaMia.
There seems to have been some blurry lines in the past in terms of personal horses and rescue horses. Faheed is not a rescue and has never been presented as such since I’ve been there.
Yes, Patricia still has too many horses. If the rescue is going to take on more cases, she’s gotta clear out the room for them first. But she pays out of pocket for their care and acknowledges that she needs to sell them and get down to 3.
Now, to address what I’ve seen in terms of sloppy resource allocation. The property is Patricia’s outright and she has every right to keep her own horses there. Currently about a quarter of the horses at her property are rescues, half are boarders, and a quarter are her own. I’ve seen her pay out of pocket for vet care for her own horses and other expenses like pasture boarding them in the summer, so it’s just the hay and volunteer labor spent on her horses that someone could take issue with.
She has a boarding arrangement with a kid who exchanges work for board, so that’s how most of the mucking and some of the feeding of her horses is taken care of. A couple of times a week rescue volunteers may feed them, but no one seems to mind the extra 15 minutes, and if she ever does sell them the money’s just going back into the rescue anyway, so I don’t see how it’s unethical. If that turned out not to be the case, then there’s a problem. But commenters who paint a picture of volunteers slaving away caring for her horses are exaggerating.
The one other thing that could be handled more cleanly is hay. The boarding money isn’t necessarily dedicated to the rescue, but other hay donations like those from local feed stores, are. So those should be better separated for accountability’s sake.
Anyway, I think that covers the main points brought up in the post and the following comment thread. If I’m being naive and someone has evidence of these accusations, by all means post them.
In the meantime, let’s save the hatred for people like Sam Milbredt. I’ve dealt with her personally too, but I’ll save that for another time!
Anyone who is illiterate enough to mistake the word purebreed for purebred (I’m assuming this is something like not knowing the difference between maroon, the color, and moron, someone stupid) needs a bit of special education. Both the Arabian and the Friesen stallions shown would make very serviceable geldings.
Unplanned pregnancies are inexcusable in a rescue situation. Yeah, sometimes a rescue mare might pop up pregnant—I think Joe at TB Friends finds himself surprised by a foal or two from time to time, but that’s the way the mare came to him. Any colt that finds its way to Joe’s ranch in Woodland lives in the round pen, all by himself, until he gets a visit by the vet and has those nuts removed. He has one right now, an adorable true black three-year old, Justice, who will be visited by the gelding bus once the weather is favorable.
One should never have more horses than one has hay for. That’s simply poor planning, hoping for the hay fairy to bring a ton or two.
I’m glad these types of “rescues” and “breeding operations” are being outed because they tend to give ALL of us a bad name, whether we are involved in rescue or breeding operations or not. I have a fondness for geldings for a reason ;o) Some people like mares and prefer them, and that’s fine. But in my view and for wanting to do the horse thing and ride and show without “issues,” geldings are the best.
Accidental breedings? How the heck does THAT happen — at a responsible breeding farm or at a rescue? People are obviously not THINKING — but there are those who don’t believe in spaying or neutering their dogs or cats because “it’s not natural” — and having unwanted litters IS, I guess — and a fellow I knew who believed that ALSO thought I was terrible for putting down my aged horse that had all kinds of issues including nerve damage from being put in a pasture with a food-aggressive gelding whose owner didn’t get the same questions about HER horse that I got about mine.
It takes all kinds, I guess. Gak.
Heh.
My next door neighbors have a pit bull mix dog and a Sheltie mix bitch, neither one “fixed” of course. Then they’re all upset by the litters that keep happening – because the world needs more pit bull/Sheltie/Gawd knows what else mutts, don’t they?
I made a noise once about getting at least one of them fixed, and the man jumped all over me – “We’re NOT wealthy people!” Well, the no-kill shelter offers neutering for $55 right now, which is, I believe, less than the 2 cartons of cigarettes they go through in a week….
“Proven Stud – the ability to create a foal” hahahahahhahahaha ……sorry, struck me funny. There’s a lot of human animals out there that could use that on a craigslist posting!!!!!
It’s TRUE though! Everybody uses that phrase in ads and all it means is that it got something pregnant!
It is funny though, its almost like water bottle companies saying that their bottles are “special’ because they are “bio-degradable”. Heck, anything is biodegradable, its just a matter of how many hundreds of years does it take to turn into dirt. Lesson learned again. People are stupid.
Good on you for outing them, fugs. Funny, WE had no less than 7 stallions/colts surrendered back in March and what do you know, not a single accidental pregnancy, everything lost their nadgers and all are adjusting REALLY well to life as a cute gelding! One of the things about the way we do it with a committee, no single person can approve a surrender, the COMMITTEE has to approve it including our treasurer who tells us if we have enough $ to support another and the Chief Field Officer (me) who knows if we have adequate space for that individual and are able to cater to its needs. Majority vote is required for a surrender to be approved and we take it on and committee makes themselves available via phone at all times in case of emergency.
We’ve got policies and procedures available for pretty much every eventuality so everyone knows what we do in case x happens at any given time.
Its taken loads and loads and LOADS of work to get us to this point. Note to rescuers-in-the-making… its NEVER easy, and its ALWAYS expensive. If you find it easy and not too pricey you’re doing it wrong LOL
Now THAT sounds like a rescue operation that has a board/committee that has their act together! How long have you been doing non-profit?
I started SC four years ago in July… so we’re just entering our 5th year of operation now
THANK YOU for posting this!
If you want to support a legitimate rescue show, do attend the SAFE show at Donida on August 7th. If you want to support lies, fraud and misuse of rescue funds to feed SERR’s breeding program, go to their show. A rescue show is a great idea, but only if the money goes to the proper place.
Regarding all the foals born at SERR, there have been some mare that were pregnant before they got there. However, there are at least 4 foals there that resulted in studs mounting mares because the horses were not properly contained. Patricia literally had her studs/colts housed in a pasture next to her mares. They were separated by flimsy monofilament fencing that could easily be stretched for a horse to get through (or for mounting through the fence). The fencing is designed to use with hot tape, but there was none at Serenity.
http://www.pennfence.com/fence/monofilament-line-horse-fence-c-78_57.html?zenid=idiajnrkacfe8euqute9c2eee3
In addition, there were gates with cheap chains or latches that lead from the stallion pasture to the mare pasture. It didn’t take much leaning on the gate for the latch to break and ALL the studs were out with the mares. I saw this on several occassions. What did Patricia have to say? Here is a quote, “Oh Well. The more the merrier.” I don’t care if she wants to breed her own horses if she has the money to take care of them (which she says she doesn’t). However, the studs were running loose with rescues mares and fillies, some merely 2 years old. Three rescues ended up pregnant (Sequoia, Lovey and Crystal) in addition to Zoey, one of Patricia’s mare that she was trying to sell and had not planned to breed.
There’s hot tape out there now (finally!, but I don’t know if it’s on), but the gates are still “cold”. No hot tape on them. WTH is going to keep Dante, or another stallion, from barging through the gate?
I saw Dante charge a gate and mount a mare at Serenity last spring. It was only pure luck that nobody, including the mare, was hurt.
The more the merrier Urgh! *puke* some poor hardworking legit rescuers will end up rescuing from her in the near future I’d be willing to put money on it.
Sounds like the hoarder/breeder asshat we got 22 off in March…
Yep he sure would make a really cute gelding!
I am wondering why, if hes sooooo valuable, is he running in a field that looks to be littered with rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chops the boys off.
Do some work on him and make him ride-able.
Lower the price.
Upgrade his situation.
Please, thanks.
Here is a pic of Eskont from the Cavalia website.
He sure looks a lot like baby Keona.
Keona was foaled out of one of the rescue mares. Patricia claims the mare was bred by the adopter (who later returned the mare). Sure looks a lot like the daddy to me. I’d put in $50 for the DNA test to prove it is Eskont’s foal. Then Patricia owes it to the foal to have it registered as a half arab and provide papers to the future owner.
Just in from Twitter pics…Patricia on their newly fixed tractor. And check out the hair – that really looks like an expensive process.
To clarify: That is an Eskont son, not Eskont.
Here is an ad showing Eskont himself. Clearly they did not update any of their stuff because it’s my understanding he has been gelded.
http://www.horseclicks.com/horses/1dqglh/
Sorry, I had no idea there where 2 studs named “Eskont”. Patricia always refers to the son as Eskont. Looking at the sites it doensn’t seem either of them had done much of anything.
Thank you for pointing that out… My mare is by Eskont, and she is gorgeous. I about had a heart attack when I saw this. Her sire was foaled in 92, so is totally not the same horse…
Is it just he’s standing, or does that baby have really jacked up legs?
WELL PUT. Eskont, the stud you cite above was supposedly finally gelded, after the comments on fugs and a few pregnancies. Patricia STILL claims that Keona, Sequoia’s foal, is not out of Eskont and tells her volunteers and vet that “the dates don’t add up” but I visited once and saw Sequia and Crystal (also just foaled, pregant at Serenity) roam the farm in and out of pastures with stallion and her saying how “cute” it is.
There were pics on the SERR twitter showing Dante (fugly fresian) sniffing over the fence with their new miniature mare… who was running loose. Also funny, Keona- the whoops foal that resulted from Sequoia running loose is now running loose. Ahh, and history shall repeat itself. I second what Fugly said, and would add that the rules for the SERR show advise participants:
“Horses are *required* to have at minimum a halter or bridle on at all times. Highly advisable would be to attach your name/cell information to the halter.”
How many horses do they expect to have get loose? Has anyone here been to a show where they were asked to add a cell number to their horse’s halter in case it got loose and things were so out of control they couldn’t announce and find an owner? Sounds like the show is going to run JUST like the Serenity farm.
and…
“Stallions and colts over the age of 2 years are not allowed. Ungelded colts ages 1-2 must wear a blue ribbon. Handlers of colts must have physical control of their horse at all time and they may not put their colt too close to any filly or mare (unless she is the dam).”
Couldn’t a 2 year old breed its own dam? I think a Serenity show is the LAST place stallions should go- with all that stud exposure I am sure every mare that comes from the SERR farm is in perpetual heat.
a ten month old can breed its own dam. Witnessed and certain.
If it turns out that Cathy’s statements,
So, yeah, Patricia has bred a lot of mediocrity here, to begin with. Then there is the fact that the mediocrity has gotten numerous rescue mares pregnant. And then there’s the fact that her entire board has left the rescue because they were sick of her not getting vet care for horses and managing money poorly. This is why people talk a lot of shit about her. It’s not because they are meanies or defaming her or whatever. It’s because those are the facts.
..turn out to be true, then I feel that Patricia should indeed retire 100% from SERR and either have it run independently or disperse the rescue. Black and white, likity split.
I find it surprising though that such bold statements can be made without any proof. I’m not that brave, to run the risk of potentially hurting a still possibly reputable rescue, and thus, the animals still in their care. There are people still there that want to help animals and want to fix the mistakes from the past and move on. As of right now, the only proof the public has of anything is that Eskont impregnated one mare by accident and that was by SERR’s own admission.
It’s obvious to anyone with any background knowledge on SERR that the Cavalia website is old. Eskont is a flippin gelding now for cryin out loud, but you use it as your initial opening example? Come on.. snark on her for being a sucky web designer but at least acknowledge that she gelded this horse after the oops mating. I do agree with you however that someone that wants to breed horses should have done a hell of a lot more research on the subject prior to starting. Her plan for a breeding program sadly shows a lack of research.
Could you please tell me what the names of the mares that were allegedly impregnated while on Patricia’s property? And what were the approximate dates in which the mating was witnessed and by whom? I don’t need long stories, just A, B and C to put a timeline together in my head. Lots of stories that all need sorting out.
Also, I don’t remember if it was you or another commenter that said there was a rescue stallion that arrived and impregnated a rescue mare..? Can you please provide the names of both stallion and mare and the approximate date that the alleged incident occurred?
Thanks Cathy
The initial opening example isn’t Eskont himself. It is his son.
And no, to my knowledge none of the stallions that got mares pregnant were rescues. There was a rescue CBER stallion that impregnated at least one rescue CBER mare, but that was at Dean’s, not Patricia’s. Fair’s fair, gotta keep the stories straight. Unless there’s something else I don’t know about!
Thanks Fugly, your readers are going to need your help in sorting all these allegations out. I read a ton of comments over the past year from a handful of commenters on your site that said a whole lot of stuff but there is simply no way to prove any of it. So this really helps when you offer up an opportunity to organize all the allegations in one spot so that some research can be started.
I’m still waiting on..
Could you please tell me what the names of the mares that were allegedly impregnated while on Patricia’s property? And what were the approximate dates in which the mating was witnessed and by whom? I don’t need long stories, just A, B and C to put a timeline together in my head. Lots of stories that all need sorting out.
WHF – here’s my best effort on names/dates:
Zoe, bred by Eskont, spring of 2008. At least one breeding was witnessed, a neighbor boy saw Eskont on Zoe and told Patricia about it. That foal is now up for adoption as a “rescue”, name is Faheed.
Lovey, presumably bred by Eskont late 2008. They were in adjacent pastures during the day with just thin strand flexible wire between them, and we know that there were some escapes through gates. She had her foal in November of 2009. She had been adopted and her adopter chose to keep her and the foal (a filly). No one witnessed the breeding as far as I know, but Lovey never left the property and the filly doesn’t look like she could have been Dante’s. Lovey is in her 20′s.
Sequoia, probably bred by Eskont in late 2008. This is the only questionable one. Sequoia had been adopted out and returned right about the time she would have been bred. Her adopters swear that she was no exposed to any stallions, that there aren’t even any stallions in their area. The foal, Keona, was (reportedly) born a bit premature, which would make the dates match up even better. Keona looks just like Lovey’s baby. Granted, without a DNA test, there’s no knowing for sure, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.
Crystal, bred by either Bandit (a rescue) or Eskont in July of 2009. I was there and saw Crystal go into Bandit’s turnout and be mounted by him. When the four or five of us who witnessed this told Patricia, she got angry and said “nobody can fsck in 30 seconds” and proceeded to….do absolutely nothing. Just days before that there was a volunteer event, and I all but pleaded with Patricia to either confine Crystal or the stallions (Bandit and Eskont, Dante was off the property at the time) to avoid any embarrassing incidents, and she refused.
The mares you are requesting information about are listed above. If you have questions about the foals and when they were born/conceived, why don’t you contact Patricia Clark yourself and ask her. The phone number is 425-432-9697.
Let’s talk about Keona. According to information posted on the web, she is 8 months old, which would mean she was foaled in November 2009. Since horses are in foal for an average of 340 days, her dam (Sequoia) would have been bred around December 2008. Sequoia is an interesting story in itself. She is one of the ponies that was “rescued†from Dean Solomon and is plastered all over the before and after section with photos of what she looked like when they got her. She was adopted out, but the adopter was unable to keep her. According to the Serenity Adoption Contract, horses cannot be sold or given away; they must be returned to SERR. The adopter tried repeatedly to contact Patricia about taking the horse back. Her e-mails and phone calls were not returned. Finally, one day, they loaded Sequoia up in the trailer and dropped her off at SERR. How do I know? I was there the day it happened. That was in September/October of 2008. It gave her plenty of time to get pregnant by December.
Now let’s talk about Braveheart (listed on the site as a rescue yearling available for adoption). Braveheart’s dam is a mare named Kiera. According to registration information I was given, Kiera is/was registered to none other than Rae Smith and Patricia Clark. (Again, someone please correct me if I am wrong). Kiera was sent out to be bred in 2008, intentionally, I believe by one of Rae’s studs. After Braveheart was born both he and his dam were listed on the SERR site as rescues. Is it legitimate for a rescue organization to rescue horses from its own founder and president? In the end Kiera was euthanized after she apparently ran through a barbed wire fence.
Finally, let’s talk about Faheed. Isn’t he the yearling oops foal out of one of Patricia’s personal mares (Zoe)? According to twitpics “Faheed, one of our yearlings available for adoptionsâ€. Granted Faheed was an oops foal, but still not a rescue. When I volunteered at SERR in 2008 I could tell Zoe was in foal. Of course I was told “oh no she isn’tâ€. Hello! The stallions were running in her pasture more often than not when I showed up there, along with her 2 year old filly and Kiera and some other mares that were there at the time. Patricia knew the studs were out with the mares, but would leave them there until morning when the barn help showed up. It was always someone else’s responsibility to handle the horses.
I can’t speak for the other two oops foals (out of Crystal and Lovey) since I wasn’t there at the time. Perhaps other volunteers can fill in the gaps, or maybe Patricia can explain it all to us…
Faheed is definitely Zoe’s foal. The age is right, and I’ve got pictures of him from right after he was born. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dayngerous/3637839508/in/set-72157611528905828/
Add Serenity’s own Twitpic that is a combo shot showing him as a weeks old baby and now and there’s no doubt. Especially since he was the only black baby with white blaze on the property in June of 2009.
The mare are listed above I think…
Crystal- bred approx the first week of July of last year to a RESCUE stallion (now dead, euthanized by Pat after colic or something- someone else can comment on this as there were some concerns about his lack of care). His name was Bandit. She pawned her off on another rescue who had no idea she was pregnant and adopted her out. Unknown foal name.
Lovey- had never left Patricia’s, was “adopted” by a kid who never paid board or a cent to have her and she foaled in November. She was in a pasture where the fence was left open and she was bred to Eskont, Patricia knew about it and told no one. She received no prenatal care and Pat told her adopter the week before she was “due” (though she foaled a couple weeks later). That foal is now registered as Lilythemagnificent signed off by Patricia with her as the breeder and Eskont as sire.
Sequoia had been adopted out in 2008 (or fostered) but returned to Serenity by no later than the first week of Nov of 2009 and immediately began roaming the farm in and out of the pens, exposed to every other horse (studs included). She foaled in the last week of the following October. Patricia claims she didn’t return to Serenity until like January because that conveniently puts the blame on her former adopter, but Cowgirly has a pic of Sequoia showing she was back. Also, the former adopter was contacted by a few of us and she was horrified she was being blamed for a pregnancy. She has no stallions and was so upset she ran around her neighborhood to see if there were any and said she couldn’t even find any studs in her neighborhood. The foal is obviously out of Eskont, she looks so much like Lovey’s foal they could be twins. BTW at first Pat was saying it was Eskont’s foal UNTIL Lovey’s pregnancy was public, then her story changed.
The last pregnant mare was Zoey, not a rescue- she’s Patricia’s personal mare. She was bred to Esont, admittedly by Patricia. Initially Patricia said something about it happening through the fence, but changed to say a “volunteer” had left the gate open. Weird, since volunteers shouldn’t be going between her horse’s pastures- they should be ONLY caring for rescues.
Sorry that’s not in order and no specific dates but this info is from us former volunteers, so we all know what happened.
I know it is hard to believe how outrageous things are there but please, consider how many stories there are and the *4* unplanned foals that are now walking the earth because of her incompetence. And can anyone still explain her paying herself over $22,000 in “rent/utilities” for one year? How about repaying herself a loan and claiming her Board approved it?
This is a place that gets skinny horses fat, she can even heal some horses who are banged up (from auction) BUT it is a place where a number of horses have died in really weird circumstances, there is no financial accountability, they can’t keep a consistent Board for more than a couple months, no one who leaves there will stand up for them- most everyone (dozens and DOZENS of people) leave because they are disgusted. Rescues get pregnant- stop discussing Eskont and consider Dante who has no training or manners and is on the farm ready to breed. Or rescue colts she considers safe with their moms until they are 2….
She should be a private farm for her own hobby horses (and get a JOB) and drop her nonprofit status like was suggested but this is her gravy train and she WON’T let it go without a fight. You can bet on that.
Sequoia couldn’t have been returned to SERR in January 2009. By then Patricia had banned me from the property, and Sequoia had already been there for a couple of months.
I’ll comment about that rescue stallion, because he is one the just makes me seethe every time I think of him. He and two mares showed up in May or June of 2009. As usual, Patricia had brought all three of them in without saying a word to the board. Another rescuer had been getting them healthy and had made good progress before something came up and she had to get someone else to take them. Bandit came in thin but not frighteningly so – ribby, hips a bit bony but not “oh my god feed that horse!” thin. (The mares were young and in pretty good shape, and were both adopted fairly quickly.)
I first knew he had come in when I saw him in a stall – a very petite blood bay Arabian stallion, reportedly 25 years old, not even 14 hands but gorgeous, and just as sweet and easy to be around as you could possibly want. He was more than a little thin when he came in, but not too bad. Did I mention that he was super sweet and easy to be around?
Patricia insisted that we put out two flakes of alfalfa for him day and night, plus grain. But the poor guy had only half his teeth!! I was told he had uppers on one side, lowers on the other, but I never looked for myself. I noticed that he would put his nose down into the alfalfa and shove it around a bit, but not eat enough to matter. Hours later, there would still be two flakes of alfalfa out for him, just spread around a bit. He started losing weight. As he lost weight, I asked Patricia if it would help if we got him alfalfa pellets and soaked them to mush, I told her I’d be happy to buy them for him…and she just ignored me, brushed off my suggestion like I was stupid for even making it. Had I a place for him, or if I could have afforded to board him somewhere, I’d have taken him off her hands – he was just the absolute sweetest, best mannered horse on the property.
It was not long after that that I got fed up and left the board and my position as volunteer coordinator, but fully intended to continue volunteering for the sake of the horses. Before the week was out, I was informed that I wasn’t welcome to come back at all.
I found out later that not long after I left, Bandit colicked badly and was put down. I realize that colic is one of those things that sometimes just happens out of the blue, but I can’t help but wonder if it would have happened at all if he’d been put on a proper “toothless, old horse” diet. I count him as one of the avoidable deaths at Serenity.
There is a very real possibility that the latest foal (out of Crystal, one of the mares who was allowed to wander) is by Bandit, a blood bay Arab stallion that came in early last summer (2009). He’d been picked up by another rescuer who had something come up and couldn’t keep him, so Patricia took him. He had been fattening up in the other rescuer’s care, but lost weight with Patricia and eventually colicked and had to be put down.
Crystal was quite happily hanging out in his turnout at the right time for him to be the sire of her foal. Patricia knew about it, but as far as anyone who was there at the time knows, never did anything to keep Crystal confined.
Pfft. Also, how the hell did she import a one year old colt in 2007? Or have I missed something.
They’re both VERY cute geldings. At a tenth the price, and sans testicles, I’d take the Friesian – he’s cute, and I’m digging the leg action, but he’s no stallion prospect.
The Cavalia website has not been updated in sometime. The photos on information on the site are form 2008.
The Friesian was a colt in 2007 when she had him “imported.” I was told he was born in California and then imported to Washington when he was weaned at 3 months. Seems kinda of young to me. Anyway, Dante ended up getting really sick with pneumonia and spent months at Pilchuck Hospital. When he got back to the farm he was supposed to get antibiotics and continued follow up care. The poor colt just kept getting sicker. The barn manager later found all the antibiotics in the cabinet; Patricia hadn’t been giving them to Dante. Someone please correct me if any of this is incorrect!
The last time I saw Dante he was a 15+ hand, 1100 pound colt with NO training. He was barely even halter broke. Volunteers at the farm were afraid to handle him. I was asked to turn him out several times because he was too much for Patricia to handle and she didn’t want to get hurt again. Of course I declined. The solution was to open his stall door and let him run out on his own, hoping he went directly to his designated paddock without incident. One day I had a mare out when they turned Dante loose. I seriously thought my life might end that day. Luckily the mare was pretty fiesty (and not in heat) and she wouldn’t let him anywhere near us.
Does anyone know if Dante has foals on the ground? There was a lot of uncertainty about his fertility since he was apparently crytorchid.
I’ve yet to hear of any foals on the ground by Dante, but I have heard that one testicle finally dropped. That has apparently caused Patricia to be even more determined not to geld him. WTF? In dogs, cryptorchid equals a trip to the vet, pronto!
Dante has been sent out to breed, no word about whether or not he has foals but then again, Patricia never admitted that Kiara (the arab mare who was put down last year after the so called “dog attack” which was more of a fence attack) was REGISTERED TO PAT with her foal (Braveheart) also registered to Pat and Pat listed as the breeder. Kiara’s former owner- Patricia’s good pal Rae, with whom she has traded horses for years… is that a rescue?
I am so tired of BYBs resting purely on the laurels of ancestry. Yes, so and so in your background gives you POTENTIAL, but then what? You have 0 evidence of what an animal can do until its trained and tested.
My mother was a dancer. I can’t remember how to two-step. I have a gorgeous voice like my Dad, Mom sings like a Siamese cat. Ditto for one of my siblings. My Dad was a mathematical whiz, I took remedial math and my sister flunked. Mom can’t swim at all, Dad was a basically unathletic little man who couldn’t get the hang of swimming or running. Two of their daughters became lifeguards. I swim regularly (but not too well) and was a minor track star in school. I must say, Dad’s athleticism did come out in driving horses. Two of his daughters are accomplished horsewomen, one prefers cats. Dad was a whiz at multiple languages, only one of his daughters learned a second language—badly. I can say a few essential words in other languages, and that’s it. Mom can’t cook, neither can my siblings. They make spectacular ruins of recipes. I write recipes.
Proof’s in the pudding, as they say. Genetics give you potential. Breeding is always a crap shoot, even if you’re well versed in genetics. Show me, don’t tell me.
My sister has a lovely half-brother to Barbaro. We picked him up at Fairmont Park where he had ran seven times and finished last every time. >.<
The sheer mind-blowing number and availability of any caliber stallion available today is amazing. The reasons why people actually breed their mares to these stallions are beyond me, but guess what—they do! If there weren’t people breeding to these (putting it nicely) unqualified stallions there would be many less of them to begin with. Sure there would still be some that would be using these ugly ducks to breed to their own herd, but the numbers would be much slimmer. Unfortunately in my rural area there is limited access to a decent stallion at an easily driveable distance. So what do most people do here? Do they put a few $$ into their mare and AI her? Heck no…they drive down the road to Sally Joe’s place and breed to her stallion that wouldn’t even make a decent gelding at an open show level. Wish I could post a few pics of the cream of the crop that is being bred in my neck of the woods! It’d be good for a chuckle.
This is really a shame. After looking at their website a bit they have some good before and after pictures. I’m sure there are horses that have been saved. Is this a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Unplanned pregnancies is definitely a total fail as well as having to ask for emergency hay. I guess it just goes to show that anyone can make themselves look good on the internet and supports what I’ve read here before which is how important it is to visit a rescue in person to get a better idea of what is really going on.
And I can’t help this but I think that little Arab stallion would make a very cute gelding.
Asharri – speaking for myself, but I feel safe saying most former board members and volunteers would agree, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, quite a few horses have been saved. Unfortunately, there have also been a number of very avoidable deaths, at least three and likely four “oops” foals, and an almost total lack of training/work for any of the horses there.
What would it take to save Serenity?
First: get the total population of horses there way down. Ten or so, absolutely no more than 15.
Second: Patricia needs to get rid of all but two or three of her own horses – get them to homes where they have something to do.
Third: The rescues need more handling than just leading in and out of the barn or being handled for grooming/hoof care/ vet care. And they need it consistently! There are off-and-on efforts at training, but they’re more off than on because, like board members, every decent trainer that comes in is soon fed up and either leaves or is kicked out by Patricia for the crime of disagreeing with her. Bellamia is a perfect example – she’s at least three years old by now, and I doubt she’s even been started. She’s a club-footed, young, untrained Arab mare with an adoption fee of $750 because Patricia’s convinced she’s special.
Fourth, and probably most important: Patricia needs to listen to the board. There are usually 25 to 30 horses on the property because she refuses to reduce the number, in spite of repeated votes by the board to do so. (The ratio of rescues to personal varies.)
The before-and-afters look good because most of the horses that come in just need groceries and a bit of basic care. A newby with the sense to call the vet and put out food and water could do as well.
Is it true that Bellamia was bred by Patricia? Or she got pregnant there? I seem to remember hearing a rumor about that.
Wow! Go offline for a bit and see wht happens. Nice to see Serenity/Patricia Clark finally being fully (or close to it) discussed.
Here’s the story I got (over many months) on Bellamia. She belonged to someone who was boarding Bellamia and at least one other horse (Mirage, I think) with Patricia. The boarder took off, and left the horses. Patricia just kind of quietly labeled first Bellamia and much later Mirage as “rescues”.
Consider this- the before and after pics include
1)Sequoia, who got pregnant.
2)Trina had to be tested for pregnancy because of stallion exposure, her adoptive family got to foot the bill.
3)Lovey- also got pregnant at Serenity at about 21 years of age, had no prenatal care while with Patricia- who did not recognize her as pregnant despite knowing she had been in with Eskont (when the alleged “volunteer” let them in together)
4) Mohave (aka Copper) is back at Serenity. His adoptive owner couldn’t keep him and called Pat who said she didn’t have room. So the adoptive owner tried to find him a new home (not free, she was being responsible) and when Pat found out she contacted her and said she was violating the adoption contract, stopped the lady from rehoming him to someone who really wanted him and demanded he come back. He is now one of 30 horses at SERR.
5) You can see a pic of Frankie on that page, described as Jakes Best friend. That horse was never a rescue, he was purchased by Pat for the people adopting Frankie as a second horse, but listed as a rescue to boost Serenity’s numbers
6) Danny was rescued by someone else and Patricia just took care of his wounds- he was later on CL for $250 or something.
Down lower on Rsainbow Bridge you see the 2 horses that were ever brought to Serenity to be euthanized humanely… every other horse that has died there or been euthanized was due to some accident or illness that happened there:
Reba
Chester
Stormy
Cabella
Bandit
and there may be others I don’t know about.
Also, their website is nice, but the main page (on the right) shows a horse getting his teeth done. Good, right? NO! That is one of Patricia’s personal horses!!!
Face it, we’re not the bad guys- SERENITY EQUINE RESCUE IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS…. NOR IS IT WHAT THEY SAY IT IS.
Rephrasing MareCare’s comment about Frankie for clarity:
5) You can see a pic of Frankie on that page, described as Jakes Best friend. That horse was never a rescue. Frankie was purchased by Pat for the people adopting Jake because they wanted a second horse to go with Jake (who was a rescue). But Pat listed Frankie as a rescue to boost Serenity’s numbers.
Thanks for the information. Again it just goes to show that you simply can’t go by what you see on the internet or even by what a rescue may tell you. The only way to know for sure if a rescue is legit and running things in a way that you can be proud to support is to visit yourself and watch. It is a shame that Serenity is like this. We need more rescues in the horse community and it sucks that time and effort gets wasted on weeding out/exposing the bad ones.
According to her site, the Friesian is a yearling and was imported in 2007 at three months old..and is a yearling…is that the “new math” I keep hearing about? 3 years old is really 1 year old now?
I teach in Florida. Trust me, we’ve gone WAY past ‘new math’ down the ‘make it as complicated, tricky and confusing as possilbe and we’ll *call* it teaching them to think’ path. High Stakes Testing has only forced us to spend more time teaching test-taking strategies, and taught states to tweak their testing so we can show gains.
The foal was born in 2007 and his mother was impregnated, therefore, in 2006. That means minus one year. 2008 was a leap year, so we can subtract that year, too. SO, 2007 to 2010 makes three years.. but now we subtract two and thus, we have a yearling!
And it’s HIGHLY valuable because it is a cross between two rather dissimilar breeds… and it might grow feathers on it’s legs. Feathers on it’s legs!? Well, that means it *might* be able to fly one day.
LOL!
The website is outdated– last updated in 2007 or 8.
So it’s basic math.
The Cavalia site is at least two years out of date.
Fugly, please encourage people to email the Western Australian butcher who is planning on slaughtering morehorses for human consumption in August. We need to get this stopped, Australia doesn’t want or need to eat our beautiful horses!
His name and email is
Vince Garreffa
retailorders@mondo.net.au
Please everyone email him and speak out about your disgust!!
Is there really no concern about bute, or other drugs in this meat? That, if nothing else, has to be a good reason not to eat horse.
You know, I don’t think most people know about that. It’s not like this guy goes around mentioning it to people.. I am a bit surprised at the lack of research in the minister who approved this. He will regret that when people start dying like they have in Europe… All of a sudden it will be said he was ‘duped’ into believing the meat was safe etc…
Like he can’t read up on it by himself… It’s what big boys do….
The header on the Friesian’s page says imported from Holland. The ad itself says from Denmark. This is not even slightly the same place – which was it? (I’m Dutch, living abroad, and I’ve heard ‘Holland and Denmark are the same place, right’ more times than I care to count – but if you’re importing a horse from either of those places I should think you should at least figure out where it is….)
Also, the link to the farm his sire stands at is broken. It was a 3 second google to find the correct one (looks like a nice place, too! They in fact own both this horse’s sire and his grandsire, and they’re much easier to see in the rather nice pictures on that website. I’d link it here, but it’s only in Dutch, which is a shame because it looks like an excellent example of how such a website should look – good pictures, listing stallions with actual show and sport achievements, professional or at least decent looking layout/spelling/grammar…)
And yeah, the Arab’s cute. But not stallion cute.
I was about to post something about the apparent lack of geographical knowledge.
I kind of get the whole ”Dutch/Danish” mix up, but come on, Holland OR Denmark, which is it?!
THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS!!! OK, here’s the real deal as I used to volunteer there for many months and pretty recently left. Yes, Eskont is gelded. Half of the time the hot fences DO NOT WORK. Her arabians, while very cute are sadly useless as many of them are older and have had absolutely NO WORK DONE TO THEM. Patricia also tries to put people on these arabs telling them that they are broke to ride and they’re not. They’re sweet, but they’re are a few that will buck and rear your butt right off. She uses the money that is dedicated to the rescue to feed ALL the horses on the property, including boarders, and personal herd. At last count her personal herd of arabs and the friesian puts her at around 11 horses. She absolutely refuses to clip or groom the horses manes and tails, because they deserve to be “natural”. They’re matted, tangly, fugly messes. She has had the county called on her numerous times due to building regulations and the manure pile. She always claims she has no money and has to pawn jewelry to get hay. But she wastes more money than anything. All of the horses get grained, including her already very fat personal herd of Arabs. She won’t help or do much labor AT ALL!!! She seriously spends a majority of her time in her house on the computer, sending out nasty grams and trying to take people who “slander” her to court. Many MANY feed stores and vets in the area and shavings warehouses, won’t give her what she needs because she owes them so much money. While she is very good at rehabing thin, sickly horses, she is personally VERY VERY difficult to work with. She goes through volunteers and board members like no tomorrow, because she is truly imbalanced. It’s a nerve wracking place to be and she refuses to take suggestions or advice from anyone, she just wants money. and she blows it. ALL OF IT. If there is even a slight chane of bad weather, EVERY horse that can come in a stall does. She puts tons and tons of shavings outside underneath the shelters and in the stalls. Which is great, if you have the means to do it. But, when you don’t it’s a waste of resources. Even her best “friends” refuse to be board members for her, because of how crazy she is. She tries to tell people that her arabs are worth no less than $6500, which maybe they could be, if they were trained and cleaned up. NONE of the arabs except for her retired dressage horse have Ever been to a show. When it comes to volunteer days like the “Day of Caring” she hides in her house as she has personally told me “She hates dealing with people, it gives her anxiety” Some of us volunteers set up a tack sale for SERR and stayed really late set it up and took it down and worked the whole thing and she sat in the house or went to go run errands, which took 5 hours. It does not take 5 hours to get from Maple Valley to Enumclaw for grain. She has way too much on her plate and is truly mentally not all there. *sigh* Ummm I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can come up with for now…
SlowLoper – whoever you are, you have my complete sympathy. I was at Serenity for ten months, and the more involved I became, the less sense the place made. Nearly everything you say matches up with what I saw while I was there. But you left out something – with everything that volunteers do for Serenity, Patricia rarely does anything for them. Occasionally she’ll do something nice for her favorites, but most toil on with broken promises and suspect “I just love you”‘s from Patricia.
The thing that doesn’t match up is the grooming bit – Patricia used to like it when people would groom her horses up all nice and pretty.
What concerns me most about SERR is that the scenario you described could have been Dean Solomon circa 2004-2005. Minus the compulsive lying. Her horses were fat and well-cared for, she didn’t have too many and she did do some good things for horses. That was until she ran out of money, her hoarding got out of control and businesses got wise to her. Yet people still supported her, to the bitter end. Everything you described, I recall similar situations at PEC. I don’t know if SERR is capable of going the way of PEC, but I do know the only thing that will guarantee it won’t is people speaking out when they see unethical/illegal actions such as breeding rescues and misappropriation of donated funds.
I agree with you 100%. This is exactly how Dean Solomon started out. When the money ran out the horses starved and there wre many deaths. Serenity is on the same path. When finally there isn’t one cent left and the property is in foreclosure, someone is going to have to re-rescue the the horses from SERR.
Forgot to add that one of the people who supported Dean Solomon is the same perosn who is promoting this show for SERR. Do some people never learn?
SlowLoper – Thanks for the info. This is exactly waht I saw at SERR two years ago.
As they say, a picture tells a thousand words. Here is one of Patricia’s mares in her natural look – ungroomed for months.
And I think this is Kiera – not as bad but still not well kept. Would you want to buy or adopt a horse that looks like this?
Shortly after these photos were taken there was a new rule that no one was allowed to take photos on the farm without permission. I also have pics of the barn being flooded (with horses still residing in the stalls) after it was built with no permits.
In answer to your question about whether I’d adopt a horse that looked like this: as an experienced horsewoman who can assess conformation/character accurately, I could look past it. HOWever, it would raise a red flag in terms of wondering what other kind of slackass care the horses receive. How could I trust they’d been vaccinated, wormed, etc?
Social workers take seriously reports of kids coming to school with dirty hair and clothes for a reason. It’s labeled neglect, and there’s always more serious neglect at home (this was my field for a number of years). You follow a chronically dirty kid, and you’ll find he/she isn’t fed properly, may not know how to brush their teeth, gets left alone a lot—and the parents are either ignorant as shit, or great big boozers who don’t have any time for the kid. The difference between neglect and abuse is mainly semantics.
Just as with that Skunkhead Donna Shelton. Neglecting to remove a colt’s halter turned into serious abuse.
Those Pictures are EXACTLY 100% Accurate and you’re not allowed to brush their manes out because chunks of mane may fall out and that is a huge NO NO to Patricia!!!! WELL NO KIDDING when they’re dread locked of course ther mane is going to fall out.
Did Jahmaal get gelded? How about Braveheart? Just wondering if you know, both are far past 6 months now…
Yes they finallay got gelded, however they had to both be re opend up because the swelling was so severe and she refused to turn them out like the doc said too… The most she had them turned out was for 10 minutes and she had us “slaves” do it…
Speaking of unapproved stallions.. here’s one for sale in Belleview, FL that anyone, yes ANYONE would want in their barn producing rather thick necked ungraceful-looking spotted horses.
http://ocala.craigslist.org/grd/1859718533.html
By the way, the ad states that he is VERY ‘broken’. They’ve had him for 12 years.
Phew! His neck is thicker than his loins! He’d make a cute pony club mount, and I’ll bet he’s pretty gentle if he’s been putting up with those owners.
I need to read more carefully—I glanced at the price (which according to the ad is “not set”) and initially read $700, and I thought ” What a very cute gelding he’d be for $700.”
Then I saw the 4th zero and said out loud, waking up napping cats, “Are you people NUTS???” $7,000 but the price is not set. I’d say my price might be the right one…
I can’t argue with the inappropriateness of breeding rescues, accidentally or otherwise. However, with respect to the featured Eskont son, I will take exception. He is a well put together horse, good shoulder, lovely neck and head and well proportioned. Agree from the picks he does not appear to be over 14.2. I do not have a problem with someone keeping a horse of this caliber as a stallion for limited use. Granted, there are many Arabian stallions with better credentials out there, but not everyone can afford a $2500 or $3000 stud fee. You might argue that such people shouldn’t be breeding, but I think there is a fine line between being responsible about breeding and being elitist. I would argue that it is possible to responsibly breed a carefully selected mare, grade or registered, to such a stallion to produce an offspring that is better than the mare, and registerable, for one’s own personal use. No, I wouldn’t stand this stallion to outside mares, but on the other hand, I would not arbitrarily say he should be gelded either. It depends upon what the intended use is.
Errr, I think the intended use is ‘pasture ornament’.
I didn’t know that this job requires testicles…
I do not think there is any way he is 14.2, I would estimate him to be 14 hands maybe. He is very petite, but yes- very pretty and quite nice. However, he does not get any trianing so it is hard to read his potential- he does get bred quite a bit. I’ve never seen or heard of him being ridden, and only saw him handled to move pastures or come in and out of the barn if/when he was ever stalled.
oh for HALF that price I can sell you a gelding that goes back to the Darly Arabian! LMAO And mine has spent the summer at an event barn learning his job. He is just as cute (if not cuter) than that guy…knows his job is giving lessons to kids and will jump anything you show him. Hmmm…maybe I should raise his price! LMBO
I LOVE Eskont, and if I were rich I’d scoop him up and take him home and train him and ride him… but I’m not rich.
Speaking of places with ay emergencies, remember Hacienda de los Milagros? I live right down the street… anyway a friend was there and saw all kinds of injuries with proud flesh thaty a vet definitely did not see, as well as a donkey with a prolapsed penis that looked awful and wasn’t treated. She took pics and forwarded to AC. But this is what happens when you rely on donations in a bad time… I will say, the guy is actively adopting the donkeys/horses out now, so I give him kudo’s for trying to rectify the situation.
That little Arab Eskondt son needs to be gelded, badly. He’s cute, but that’s about it! His father photographs much better than him! As for Dante, if he’s a cryptorchid, he needs to be gelded too, as it’s hereditary; plus he’s fugly. Both of them will probably have very nice personalities after that and make someone nice riding horses.
That Arab Stallion looks almost exactly like the Arab GELDING that I ride. He is cute though.
I think others have said it – but the horse that is featured at the top of this post and that Patricia called “Eskont” has reporedly been gelded.
The Cavalia web page is at least two years old. I love how Zoey’s (Zoe?) price has jumped from $5000 then to $7500 on Dreamhorse now. She’s done nothing but stand around in the pasture, look pretty, eat and deliver an oops foal.
He would make a really cute gelding.
I personally don’t know anything about this operation but it seems there are so many people out there trying to do rescue who have their hearts in the right place but don’t have the knowledge or means to do it effectively. Good intentions that lead to bad situations for the horses involved. The poor economy just makes it worse – more horses needing homes and borderline rescue operations unable to continue because they’re out of money. Very sad.
I have one horse. I’d love to have dozens and I’d love to rescue dozens more. I can’t. I will content myself with giving my mare the best home she could possibly have, and for life. And I will contribute what I can to legitimate organizations.
but when do we stop assuming that people have these great intentions but just don’t know any better? I mean, if there was an orphanage with suspected misuse of funds, pregnant orphans, some orphans getting killed falling off the roof or in other ‘accidents’ at some point we’d all say “you know what, enough is enough”. Comment posters on Fugly and other forums have talked about Serenity’s combining personal and rescue horses, too many horses on the farm, taking in more horses than they can feed, etc for over 2 years now. Feels to me like maybe we’re beyond ignorance and moving quickly towards incompetence.
In all seriousness, how do you “oops” breed anything? My folks have owned and bred horses for 20 years, and I can’t imagine it. You don’t own a stallion without having proper facilities for a stallion, which means his own stall away from the busy part of the barn that has an upper door that can be closed if he decides to poke his snaky head out and harass people, and his own paddock which doesn’t butt up against anyone else’s pasture with high, secure fences and hot tape that works and is hooked up every time. You should know when your mares come into season. If there’s any doubt about the security of your fences or your stallion’s determination to get through them, he goes in a stall while the mare is in. Or she does. Or both. At larger places I’ve worked at, the stallion paddock is set where the stud can’t even SEE other horses, so he doesn’t work himself into a lather every time someone walks by. Even the smaller ones put the stallion paddocks on one side of the place and the other horses on the other side.
Wow, I’d think being THAT isolated would be a bit of a harsh life for a stallion… Isn’t that where most psycho-stallions come from?
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to turn them out with a bunch of geldings so they get to socialize and be horses….
I don’t either – they’re a lot more sane when they get turned out with others.
I also do not think stallions should be isolated from the other horses. I have had one stallion for 23 years and my second one for 10 years. They are housed next to mares in both the barn and in the fields. The only thing I do not do is have them next to each other. They even have very open doors into the barn. If they stick their snakey necks out, I just scratch them when I go by. In all those years of stallion ownership I have not had one oops baby. You just have to have some good fencing. It really is that simple. Back it up with a hot wire and no accidents, no excuses.
I would give someone the benifit of a doubt if they said they had one booboo baby, but any more than that is a pattern, not an accident.
I have two stallions and two colts at the moment. Although one of the colts is now covering mares he still runs out with the other one every day.
One of the older stallions runs with three “set” mares and their foals, the other has a round pen that lets into the mares field, so he is surrounded by his ladies but not interacting with the ones I do not wish him to!
Oops foals can happen, I had two happen to me.
I left someone in charge that I honestly thought I could trust.
I have no other explanation than she thought what she was doing was funny, as there is NO way it could have been an accident, and anyway, had it been, surely the logical thing to do would have been to tell me?
The next year I had two foals I did not expect one from a three year old(!), who I had been dieting as she was putting on too much weight, and one from a mare I had sent home to her owner as definitely not in foal, and who I only just managed to stop am idiot Vet injecting with steroids as she had, according to him, mastitis…again (!)
The three year old foaled down in the gelding field and luckily was found and sorted out in time to prevent and unnecessary death, the other mare foaled successfully too, but, had she had the steroids it could have been different.
So, Oops can happen to the best of us, even the most vigilant.
There was NO way the stallion responsible for the foals could have got to either of these mares by accident.
Keeping your stallion in a concentration camp does not prevent Oops foals.
I actually don’t mind them being turned out with mares, assuming they are breeding stallions turned out with breeding mares. I know of one lady whose stallion is with her mares even during foaling time. He’s a grand old gent, takes good care of his herd, and is very VERY laid back with mares and foals. I think there is something to be said for letting a stallion do what he instinctually is wired to do– take care of a herd.
That doesn’t mean I advocate a stallion running loose with a bunch of mares just so he can breed everything on the property. I’m talking about a breeding herd of nice quality horses.
Yes, lol I was assuming we are AVOIDING breeding here lol
If you intend to breed, I love the free range version where the stallion gets to ‘play his role’ as protector and all that stuff
I just don’t think arranging for them not to be able to even see other horses almost brinks on cruelty. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in Germany, where I was born, actually…
Doesn’t have to be mares. Or even geldings. Our senior breeding stallion has been turned out with smart-alecky yearling and 2 year old colts for several years. Might not work with every stallion, but he LOVES his retirement job –takes excellent care of the colts (herding’ them into the run-in during snowstorms, for example) and the activity has been great for his arthritis AND his brain. Our boarded stallions are all in a row in the stall together, with open windows so they can look out and see one another. Even when we add someone new there is rarely more than a few hours of fussiness while they ogle each other. Oh, and everyone travels to shows on the same trailer, next to one another. Most of the stomping I hear is from the mares at the other end!
IMO stallions are like kids — you get exactly the behavior that you expect (and require) from them. I don’t believe in anthropomorphizing stallions, but I do believe they get lonely and antisocial if they are locked in isolation all the time!
Thank you fugly for posting this.
I did my time at SERR for 6 months back in late 2008. I was a manual laborer however my name appeared on government documents including tax forms. I scrubbed wounds, water buckets, was at Pat’s beck and call even at 11 in the morning when horses were still unfed and standing in crap in their stalls. Imagine my surprise when people are telling me I was an officer of SERR. Um, what? Pat always did what she wanted to do. We would beg and plead with her to STOP her insane decisions and she would agree and the next thing we knew more horses were coming up the driveway. There was absolutely no infection control when we started, we found multiple unopened bottles of meds with horse’s names on them that were never given, yet it was always the vet’s fault that the horse was still sick.
It was just chaos over there all the time. Horses loose, Pat crying, and just scoops of grain feed to everything from a severely thin old TB to a mini. The final straw was when the Fresian stallion wheeled and kicked an “employee” and Pat came to the horse’s defense…sad thing was you really could not blame the horse, he had no training, discipline, nothing. And the manes? I brushed out the mats and dreads on an old arab mare and Pat started crying. She said it was inhumane because so much of the hair CAME OUT in the comb. Um, red flag much?
I was only there for 6 months so I never comment on anything that happened after my time there. However, knowing what I saw and had to deal with, I beleive it all. I have contacted the appropriate state agencies and an attorney re my name being used on tax documents when I never once was part of any financial anythings at SERR. Hell, I was too busy trying to keep my head above water in the barn, literally sometimes.
Please, anyone that is planning on riding in the arena at SERR, know that the cables along the walls are an accident waiting to happen. Those walls as unfinished and those cables are not supposed to be exposed like that. Please, I just ask that anyone that has kids that are going to ride in any shows there or simply use that arena, check this out first.
I am sure I will be labeled as a basher or a disgruntled board member (funny, I wasnt even aware I was ON a board when I was there). My name appeared in some minutes but I assure you NO ONE made any decisions but Pat and we just did what we knew how to do, take care of horses.
Moral of my story, know the ins and outs of the rescues you donate to, money or otherwise. Go visit and listen when multiple people have the same experiences while there.
“I brushed out the mats and dreads on an old arab mare and Pat started crying. She said it was inhumane because so much of the hair CAME OUT in the comb.”
Oh lord, she would consider me an abuser of the first order then. I have a nice family that volunteers/trades doing odd jobs on the farm in exchange for horse time. The daughters’ favorite thing to do seems to be to take grooming tools into the horse stalls and groom and brush the horses, including their manes (which often have braids or fancy designs in them when the girls are done!). My ‘poor abused horses’ can’t wait to get their attention, and recently the gelding chose to spend half his grooming time laying down. It was one of the more hysterically funny indications of his enjoyment of the attention— after we made sure he was laying down because he wanted to, and not because he was sick.
My horses love being brushed, and having their manes and even their tails done. Anyone who thinks it is cruel either doesn’t know how to brush manes, or, as the saying goes: ” The lights are flashing, the crossing guards are down, but there just isn’t any train coming.”
OT but has anyone seen these CRAZY AWFUL videos?!?!?
Who PUTS this stuff on here?? They are glad to have people SEE this?!?! Yikes!!!
Check out these great “horse trainers”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfaW-Yi0Pps&feature=related
This poor baby being halter-broke:
http://www.youtube.com/user/coxfarms#p/a/u/1/pIStoPJQz-A
I don’t even want to see the rest on her “channel”…. ugh….
OH my. Someone has a potty mouth too.
Well, I wish I could say that she’s unusual, but most of what I caught seemed like pretty standard stupid trainer stuff. She does seem to have a fetish with rearing and bucking horses. I’ve often wondered if some people don’t get off on violence in horse training. I can’t think of any other reason to do it the dangerous way, when the calm and safe way is so much nicer.
Poor baby! You know, I’ve never had a problem teaching a colt to lead. Bring mama in to feed twice a day, halter and lead baby behind as you go in and out. Quiet, easy and quick. No drama.
I can’t imagine putting anything like this out there for others to see unless it was an example of what NOT to do. And the awful music in that first one made my head hurt until I muted it. No wonder Europeans think we’re barbarians.
UGH. I watched about 12 seconds of the first video, until the girl got bucked off & hung up in her stirrup.
And I hate the message in so many Country songs: “Yew take mah rude selfish self jist as Ah AM, yew pansy-ass MF, cuz Ah will whup yer unpatriotic commie pinko ass if yew tell me Ah need ta be NICE to people an’ akshully WORK wif ‘em!!!!!!” Ties right in with the uncivilized crap you see this chick forcing on her horses.
Do people ever feel ashamed of themselves when they look foolish? Noooooo…. they can’t wait to go slap it up on YouTube. Is this mainly an American phenomenon, or do, say, Germans, Chileans, Kenyans or Koreans act the same way?
Well I guess the good news is that they’ll probably be removed from the gene pool shortly due to them being too “cowgirl” to wear helmets. On the other hand maybe their training methods are a product of them falling on their heads one too many times…
Had to laugh at the title “100% Cowgirls.”
Cuz bein a Cowgurl is so kewl……
*Sigh* Apologies for the sarcasm, and nothing against cowgirls – but these are dudes. At least their horses look healthy. I believe their horsemanship skills have been discussed on this board before???
Really? I must’ve missed that one… if it’s here somewhere, please link me to it, I just can’t believe people actually put this stuff out there for the world to see. If it was me I’d be embarrassed to death!!
Graphicdesign99 – I can`t remember if Cathy blogged about her, or if her training methods (particularly all the rearing photos) were brought up in the comments section, but I do remember following a link from FHotD to her Youtube channel. Blech.
And that second video should be titled “How Not to Halter Train a Foal.” What Charm said above is so true, they seem to really enjoy the violence…….
That second video could be used as a lesson on how not to halter break a foal. We do ours in a stall, and there’s never a moment when they are bothered or upset or anything but cheerfully curious. There’s no need for the foal to know it should be a big deal. The point is to create POSITIVE experiences with people! Not to mention that teaching your horse to pull back when you pull on a leadline is catastrophically dumb.
The filly is cute but nothing screams white trash like those videos……..I also think they where breeding for color and ended up with a bay anyways, LOL!!!!!!
Love the last few pics with the Colt making baby face at her. Just wondering how long it will take before that pair makes and oops foal?!
“Though it was summer and she had been at Serenity long enough to get healthy, Cinnamin came to us pregnant though she was in her mid-twenties. Even worse, she got pregnant while in the care of an animal hoarder who called herself a ‘rescue’. ”
Oh, IMAGINE THAT! What terrible, terrible person would breed horses and call it a rescue? Certainly not you…….
Interesting since Lovey is at least 20 and she got pregnant at Serenity.
AHAHHA the IRONY
Ugh…Serenity has the daughter of a mare I recently purchased. My mare is a regional reserve champ in halter, along with having several halter wins. Poor girl. Makes me wonder if I can get her out of there somehow.
Like you Fugs, I have no problem with somebody running a rescue also having a breeding farm…they are likely the people best experienced at having a rescue, considering at some point breeding all that can go wrong will, and you learn a lot about specialty diets and why proper Vet care is so important, etc. Really, if this gal wasn’t breeding the rescued horses I would be inclined to support her and given that the horses I saw on the site look like they are in pretty good shape, I would otherwise say she’s doing a decent job of it right now.
I wonder if my husband would notice another horse…
Err…among the best experienced to have a rescue. Sorry, typing with a sprained thumb. An 80 pound goat is surprisingly strong and agile when he doesn’t want a bath even if it’s 95 degrees!
Goat advice– those metal stanchions are a life saver when washing goats. I gave up long ago on ‘training’ goats to take baths. They don’t like being wet, period.
I would love to get one but have other things that needed to come first unfortunately. My husband and I usually do well between us handling our goats as long as we’re both there when it comes to hoof trimming/bathtime/all the things they aren’t fond of (We’ve discovered if one holds them and feeds them some corn, the other can bathe or trim and they stand very quietly). My husband was in the ER the other night due to severe dehydration and was supposed to stay in bed so I thought, what the heck, I can do it myself….sadly, I found out that I couldn’t!
So now I will be shifting my to-do/to-buy list to include a stanchion!
errrrr…. you may want to scan through the comments on a few of these threads before supporting this rescue. There is a LOT more going on there than rescues getting bred. The arena, barn and outbuildings were never permitted, the case has been open with KC since 2006 and is now in the hands of the prosecuting attorney. Tell me a 30 horse farm that just piles poop up and has no compost or haul out system? The only financial statements you can find are her 2008 income taxes on guidestar in which she repaid herself a loan for some odd $41,000 as well as paid herself over $22,000 for ‘rent’ from the rescue, and another umpteen thousand dollars in staff costs. No Board members saw or approved that spending or loan, we did not see or approve that income tax form before submitted though 2 of our names were on it. Further, fat horses that get no handling become dangerous horses- how about her board member who suffered a broken pelvis riding Star, the TB mare. Yet another SERR snafu swept under the rug.
Yes, PLEASE support a rescue but don’t go on pictures alone. Read all the comments here, there is one that does a pretty good job of breaking down all the horses listed on the before/after page and where they ended up. In my opinion website photos are not the whole story, especially not for Serenity. Heck, one of the main page pics is not even a rescue horse (getting its teeth floated), it’s a private Cavalia horse. You could see that pic and think “oh, look at the rescues get teeth floated there” when you aren’t even seeing a rescue.
Not to mention a consistent pattern: people start as volunteers at Serenity, they have good things to say about Serenity, when bad things are said on this forum and elsewhere, they run in saying “yes, bad things happened, but stuff is changing, we’re fixing the problems, it will all be better, just please back off and give us some room”. Then six months or a year or even two years later, they quit…and some of them come here and say “nothing ever changes, it’s the same stuff different day and Patricia has an endless supply of excuses for why things are as they are”.
How about these simple and low cost steps as starters? Low? How about friggin’ FREE!!!! Get rid of at least half the horses on the property. Sell them for whatever they’ll bring on the open market, shy of sending them to auction (of course). If they’re rescues, drop their adoption fee. Don’t take in any more rescues until that’s done, and then take in one only when one goes out. And for the love of all that’s horse, UPDATE the website. Current information, current pictures and a current count of rescues. Oh, and stop letting horses roam free on the property – it might be cute, it might suggest an idyllic environment, but it’s lousy horsekeeping.
Hey Fugs, just got a mailer from the Humane Society. Apparently they’re hoping for some support to push through the Prevention of Equine Cruelty Act. (H.R. 503/S. 727).
It would make it illegal to ship horses out of the country for the purposes of slaughter for human consumption. Knowing your stance on slaughter, I figured you’d be happy to hear about this. I sure am.
I have a question for rescuers.
If you pull a mare from someone, do you automatically do a pregnancy test for the mare? I read somewhere that someone had taken a mare from a property, did the check-ups, and a few months later found a foal at her side. I’ve heard of this happening more than once and I was wondering how this is taken care of and how its missed.
I’m not an Arabian person but, in all honesty, I think he’s a cute horse. Definitely not a stud, as he’s not purebred and hasn’t done anything yet, but he has a cute little face. But cute isn’t worth $7500, right? And what’s wrong with Arabians being 15 hands? I thought their height was between 14 – 15 hands. Again…I’m not an Arabian person. xD
That’s another thing I don’t understand; why would you rescue a horse from abuse or neglect then, when they’re healthy or close to being healthy, put the stress of raising a foal on them? Even if they have an amazing bloodline and they’re healthy, I’d want to make sure the mare I rescued is feeling happy and secure first and does something to prove herself as a mare worthy of breeding. Not to mention the fact that foals aren’t easy to raise.
And, yes, every person that points out any flaw is a big, fat meanie. Oy…
I would test if I knew or suspected that there was stallion exposure.
I would also test if the mare put on a bunch of weight or even lost it within months of me taking it. Big udder is kinda obvious, changes in temper would make me check, too.
Basically, no, I wouldn’t test EVERY mare, but if she physically COULD get pregnant (i.E. she’s not 40 YO) and I see a reason why she might be, I probably will test, just to be sure she has no twins or even just one cooking, especially if the vet says ‘he thinks she might’ or whatever when he checks her out initially. It can be mighty bad for the baby if the mare does not get appropriate nutrition during pregnancy…
Ok, btw my guide goes for me buying mares, seeing as I don’t really do rescue or confiscate horses and stuff xD
I don’t think they do — probably too much money to do every filly and mare. But as a private adopter that was the first thing I checked last spring when then mare we rescued arrived with scratches on her back and withers like she’d been mounted. My guess was that she wasn’t in season, and was trying to get away from whatever stallion or colt was jumping her, but I sure didn’t want that rack-o-bones mare burdened with a pregnancy!
Anyone else notice that they rescued 75 goldfish??? HAH! What’d they do? Buy a bunch of feeder fish from Petsmart?
Yeah, I was actually wondering the same thing… I tend to think that if you don’t look after goldfish they just die.. Fairly quickly.. I never knew there were rescues and stuff who did that kind of thing xD
Notice also they saved one fish for every horse? Maybe they are born with a goldfish attached to them somewhere? Duno
It takes a lot of resources to care for a goldfish properly. I was shocked when I learned this — they are heavy pissers and poopers and need a lot of water for it to “cycle” (acquire the appropriate bacteria to deal with nitrogen) properly. The rule of thumb is 20-25 gallons per fish but more is better. They can live 20+ years if given correct care.
Of course, most of them live in little bowls and wither away in the sting of their own ammonia-laden urine.
Goldfish rescue, my ass. (eyeroll.)
Wow, I didn’t realize this.
Never thought something so small could be so complicated xD
I wonder if ppl really report it when someone ‘abuses’ their goldfish…
I dont know much about arabs… but something about this horse doesn’t look right to me….
http://cavaliastable.com/images/zoe08left.JPG
there is just something about its hind end that doesnt look right…
Posted as a 6 year old, bred for endurance (doesnt say anything about showing, but has been worked infrequently)
Seriously? I bet you could get much nicer rescue horses for MUCH cheaper… What was she thinking? These people bug me… even more in the dog world though, because there are so many MORE of them! not only are there more of them, but there are more of them dumb enough to buy into the $1000 “purebred” labradoodles! ITS A MUTT, GET OVER IT.
I wish there were like some big class that everybody had to take before they could have a horse…
Um, I think they stood her up like this to go for the ‘Arabian Show Pose’
Except they failed and she looks nothing like a Halter Arab, posing or not xD
Ya know…..the first thing my eyes were drawn to were those really super long pasterns, but they also have him standing on uneven ground???
Super-long pasterns and post-legged to me. Does not look like a combination recommended for soundness.
I think it’s the neck that’s shorter than her head is long…
The problem is that it is a mediocre horse with the aforementioned pasterns problem paired with incorrect trimming. Looks like that mare doesn’t have a heel to stand on…
Just because it’s an arab does NOT mean it can do endurance… those legs are not suited to the sport one bit.
Ugh. She’s got her front legs on a “hill” and the back legs in a “hole,” probably to create the illusion of a level croup. Actually she’d stand up better squared up I think, just not Arab-y enough I guess.
Her legs, neck and head are CRAZY wrong, though she seems to have a kind expression.
Those pasterns …. wow.
Two criticisms of this post (sorry, Cathy, but I’m sure you’ll cope)…the Cavalia Stables page is at least two years old, not current information. At least two of the horses there have since been given/sold to teenage volunteers at Serenity, and (as has been pointed out) Eskont has been gelded. Not that there isn’t plenty of dreadful stuff there, but you can find just as bad on the current Serenity site: http://serenityequinerescue.com/default.aspx Primarily by omission. Sweet Year was adopted a month ago, yet she’s still listed as an available horse, almost none of the horses have descriptions to go with them, etc…
Second – speaking as a former Serenity board member, when I left the only board member who didn’t have a full time job was Patricia. The whole time I was at Serenity, there was only one other board member that I didn’t know for sure had a full-time job, and her involvement was practically nonexistent.
According to Tash on the Auction Horses site, Sweet Year was returned by the Adopter on July 20th. This still doesn’t explain why she shows as adpoted on SERR’s home page and available under the Thoroughbred tab.
Successful breeder = successfully bred something
Haha, this cracks me up, whether you refer to the stallion or the Breeder….
I mean, WOW, what an achievement! It’s not like teenagers without a finished education regularly achieve something similar… *rolls eyes*
Bringing some of WaHobbyFarmer’s questions up here: Foals. Yes, there have been foals born at Serenity who were not conceived there. There were two when I was volunteering there: Braveheart out of Kiara, Cloud out of Kat (born in foster, but brought back to Serenity). The three (probably four) oops foals discussed had to have been conceived at Serenity. Two of them were born at Serenity (Zoey’s and Sequoia’s) and two were born off-site (Lovey’s and Crystal’s).
Here is a photo of Lily, Zoe’s foal.
http://loveyg.shutterfly.com/949
She could almost be the twin sister of Keona. There are lots of pics of Lovey on the site; she obviously has a great adopter. I don’t know who saved her from SERR, but THANK YOU for giving these two girls a great home!
One of the things I do not understand (just one, there are a number) from the new, updated site, is, if you are an experienced breeder (and I am) why on earth would you need a Vet’s advice to take a five month old foal off an obviously starving mare?
I had a Fjord mare come in, in as bad shape as that Arab mare, with a THREE month old colt on her and he was in the next stall being weaned as they came through the door!
As with this mare the colt was fat and well and well grown.
To me it was simply a no brainer.
This woman is not an experienced breeder, she is a soppy moron who happens to breed a few second rate animals- no problem with that so long as she can afford……..oh, wait, she can’t, though, can she?
I and many on this blog like me are obviously not doing it right when we feel we just cannot leave that sick/starved animal there, but must take it home and make it better – AT OUR OWN EXPENSE.
(Quick aside here…I came by the Fjord mare form a Knacker, he thought she should be given a chance and dropped her off at my place, they aren’t all bad)
We should obviously be begging all over the Internet for hay money, cos who would ever guess that you are going to need hay?
What, every year???????
Was the Fjord a crossbred? I can’t fathom a purebred Fjord going for kill– the breeders and owners network pretty hard to keep that from happening. A crossbred Fjord, on the other hand, is taboo. Get caught breeding one, and you will lose your horses’ papers and your membership status.
Oh, wonderful. An, at best, glorified backyard breeder masquerading as a rescue. Okay, I can understand maybe, MAYBE one oops baby at a *reputable* rescue, but having it happen two, three, four, five, six times? Yeah…that’s not an accident. If you let a stallion run loose with mares, and don’t even make an attempt to keep them separate, then guess what? That makes you a BYB, not a rescue. And a hoarder to boot!
I somehow have a suspicion that she’s under the delusion that she believes her horses come from rare and precious bloodlines, therefore, she’s letting the horses run loose, knock up her mares, and CHA CHING! The money will come rolling in because people will TOTALLY want to snatch up her untrained, unhandled, and UNGROOMED stock. Am I right? And these will all be good, REPUTABLE buyers who will GLADLY pay her outrageous prices.
And since the Eskont son (What was his name again? I’d have to check) has been (mercifully) gelded, of COURSE she goes out and snatches up a half-starved, ill-tempered fugly colt because it’s a FRIESIAN! And of course, THAT means Friesian crosses, which means MORE MONEY! And he’s *special* because he’s been *imported!* Oooooh! Ahhhhh! Of course, do any amount of research on Dante, he actually comes from a seemingly reputable breeding farm in California. You know, I wondered if it was the same Dante that was featured here on the blog not to long ago when that idiot lost that poor mare to the barbed wire fence, and what do you know? Turns out that he is.
Anyways, I’m out of snark. This woman’s fucking crazy. There’s a new show on Animal Planet called “Hoarders.” I think she’d be a perfect candidate to be on that show, from the looks of it.
An addendum: I don’t think she’s a hoarder *yet,* but I see several red flags that she could very well become one, if left to her own devices. I can’t be the only one that sees it.
Regardless, she needs to be shut down. Badly.
Actually, your timeline is a bit off – she’s had Dante (the Fresian) for almost three years now – long before Eskont (who is apparently an Eskont son) was gelded. And she did get Dante expecting to make lots of money off him – either as stud fees or selling him, I’m not sure which. As far as I know, Patricia’s Eskont doesn’t have any planned foals on the ground, but she has definitely let Dante be exposed to open mares.
The “special” thing…oh, yeah. She insists that her horses are worth X dollars no matter what the market says. She also repeatedly refused to drop fees on rescues because she thought they were worth more. Bellamia is a perfect example – a 3 or 4 year old Arab mare with a mild club foot and no skills, and she expects someone to shell out a $750 adoption fee.
Actually, your timeline is a bit off – she’s had Dante (the Fresian) for almost three years now – long before Eskont (who is apparently an Eskont son) was gelded. And she did get Dante expecting to make lots of money off him – either as stud fees or selling him, I’m not sure which. As far as I know, Patricia’s Eskont doesn’t have any planned foals on the ground, but she has definitely let Dante be exposed to open mares.
Really? Ahhh, I didn’t know that. My bad. Thanks for the correction.
You know, I was just thinking…if she wants Dante to produce foals, then I think she might end up being sorely disappointed, since he’s a cryptorchid, and to my knowledge, they often tend to be infertile. Not always, but usually. Someone on this blog awhile back, forgot who, mentioned that a world champion AQHA sire was a cryptorchid. But I digress. Also, many Friesian stallions have either low fertility, or they’re completely sterile because of heavy inbreeding within the breed.
Of course, this doesn’t mean she’ll have the good sense to geld him even if he’s infertile-but I feel that his fertility is questionable, at best, all things considered.
If I had the means and the money, I would take Dante, call a vet to have his boys removed, and put some serious training into him. I think given some work, time, patience (and groceries) he could clean up really nice as a lovely show gelding.
But sadly, it looks like he’s stuck with a delusional idiot as an owner. What a shame. *sighs*
True cryptotchids, which are rare, with both testicles retained, cannot be fertile.
Horses with one testicle descended are usually as fertile as horses with two.
There are a number of top TBs, where the criteria is that they can run fast and nothing else, that are cryptorchids and completely unaffected, fertility wise.
Crypts with one down are often called “Monorchids” which is descriptive but incorrect, since the correct term is Cryptorchid for both one or two retained testicles (obviously the TBs have only one retained)
Yeesh. The least they could do is post a pedigree or get one up on allbreedpedigree.com, which I couldn’t find. Who cares about a stallion without a pedigree posted, to begin with?
Who, indeed? Well… a lot of … um…. crimson-naped Rural-Americans.
Sadly, the cute little Arab – though not anywhere near REAL stallion quality – is much nicer than the still-stallion Friesian. But plenty of dumbasses will say “OOOOO FRIESIAN LIKE IN LADYHAWKE!!!!” and breed their POS mares to him.
These are the same kind of people who tend to be into wolf hybrids and…. um… shit like this:
http://www.johannas-art.com/tambourines.htm
HA HA Stevie Nicks looks SO uncomfortable….
Wow, check out the trolls defending Tara on the forum about Indigo and Moon, the two starved horses who were on here not long ago. There are news updates posted there, too.
Apparently Tara, WHO KNOWS WHAT SHE DOES WITH HORSES claimed she knew nothing about raising horses in court (or shortly after court towards a journalist, can’t remember)
God I hope that Judge gets shown her rants from that forum… Hope she gets the year in jail. Or more
In one of the letters Patricia’s board sent ot her I read that Dante escaped from his pen and mounted a saddled mare that some potential adopters were there to see. Is this true? Did anyone here witness it?
I was there – and it was not pretty. Ghods…that was an overall clustfsck of a day, but I’ll focus on just the incident. Trina, a 20+ mare, had been saddled to go for a ride. I have no idea if she was in season at the time or not. Dante had a major crush on her and might have gone for her regardless. She certainly wasn’t a willing participant in what followed.
After being sadled, she was brought to the barn for some reason, Dante was in the turnout closest to the barn. He charged the gate and went for her, and she tried to trun away. She ran INTO the turnout, then tried to run back out but missed the gate and was up against the wire. Dante mounted her and she fell to her knees, still up against the wire but thankfully not tangled in it.
People mostly ran around, screamed, threw things, etc… Dante being a wholly untrained animal, it was all pretty pointless. I think being soaked with a hose and lack of success finally got him off Trina.
That was in March 2009 or so – yet Patricia still put Dante right next to mares. Heck, that incident and another I told her about might have inspired her to put him out with open mares in hopes of his testicles falling (he was bilaterally cryptorchid, one has since fallen).
He was totally retained?! That’s so unusual, I assumed he only had one retained to begin with. That is a horse who seriously needs surgery, then. Every crypt I’ve ever known was rather rank and rotten to deal with until properly gelded. Even the one colt, whose testicle was WAY high and deformed as well, was more like a rank stud, and very precocious until both testes were removed. He made a lovely sweet gelding, by the way.
If this Fresian is a crypt, I wonder why he wasn’t just returned to the breeder? That is usually an option when buying potential breeding stallions– if they are crypt, they are not considered breeding sound.
Maybe he was bought as the ‘unsellable scraps’ off the breeder by this chick? It would make sense, seeing as she is A.) A cheapo, and B.) He is unapproved and I don’t think he is even registered? Who would let a purebred Friesian go without papers if he COULD have them, seriously. That’s like selling ‘Caviar’ as ‘Fish Eggs’ and nobody pays big money for ‘Fish Eggs’ LOL
In any case, I really don’t know why anybody would spend the several grand to import him from Europe.. Unless he really was ‘imported’ from out of state as someone suggested LMAO what a piece of crap.
*Get ready for a (Probably) Stupid Question From A Non-Horsey Person!*
If such-and-such horse is born in the United States and remains in the United States, such as a horse born in California and shipped to Washington, is that not a DOMESTIC horse? How can anything be “imported” if it does not originate from outside the country?
Probably the only way I would consider such a horse imported was if he arrived from out of country In Utero, or inside good old Mom. So bred somewhere else, Mom gets imported to U.S., baby is born here…. It’s a stretch, but it’s the only way I could see calling such a colt imported.
Otherwise, it is the height of white trashdom to say, “I imported him from Tennessee to Indiana.” It just… doesn’t have the same ring to it that way.
I am not familiar with importing horses but I do recall Patricia telling me when he arrived that she got him because the person who had him importaed refused him when they went to deliver (probably the cryptoid thing?) so Pat got a good deal on him. He was also quite ill with pneumonia, I believe he spent some time at Pilchuck. He was very very sweet at first but got pushy and obnoxious quickly while on stall rest, dangerous as he got older. She said his registered name was Wooten or something.
I don’t know, but I would wager the breeder sold him very cheap as a cull. Unless they’re delusion too, I doubt they sold him as a breeding prospect.
It looks like all of SERR’s past board members and volunteers pretty much have the same thing to say. Have you noticed that there is no one affiliated with SERR that has come here with positive comments? With the exception of WHF, no one is even questioning or denying what is being said by people who saw it all happening. The poor rescue management at SERR isn’t something that happened once, or for a short period of time. It has been going on for more than two years.
One thing that people seem to be over looking is the misuse of funds by Patricia. In 2008 she brought in well over $100,000 in grants and cash donations. Right off the bat she used that money, which was meant for rescues, to pay off a personal loan of approximately $30K. It was not a rescue loan; it was a personal loan. Point blank, I asked Patricia if she should be doing that. As she sneered at me she replied, “I can do what ever I damn well please with the money.â€
Ton after ton of hay donated to the rescue was fed to Patricia’s personal herd and paying boarders.
Patricia definitely cuts corners on hoof and veterinary care for the rescues. At the same time she holds nothing back when paying for care for her personal horses. She spent over $4000 on colic surgery for one of her mares, but had one rescue euthanized after it had colic from being fed hay it couldn’t chew. How does someone who begs for money and hay afford such an expensive surgery on a personal horse? Another mare (Stormy) was mysteriously euthanized after she had been at SERR for more than a year. The mare was sound, broke and ridden by volunteers. Patricia said the mare was chronically lame and declined to elaborate about the death. Was it ever worked up by the vet? In my time there I never once saw a vet examine this horse’s feet or legs.
Patricia’s horses are priced so ridiculously high because she does not want to sell them. She puts them up for sale so she can tell people she is trying to reduce her herd, but really she has not intentions of letting the horses go.
Oh, plenty of folks who are or have been affiliated with Serenity have spoken up here. Sometimes to defend the place, sometimes to point out (correctly) that the accusation du jour is false, sometimes to deny what’s happening or try to deflect attention elsewhere. I’ve never understood why anyone would make up an accusation (or exagerate a real one) abut Serenity when there’s so much going on there that’s just wrong.
Heck, I’ll even throw in some praise: lots of skinny horses have been fattened up and adopted out by Serenity. The facility is beautiful and in a lovely setting. Most of the horses are well-socialized and pleasant to be around. The people who volunteer are hardworking and fun (I have several friends I met during my time as a Serenity volunteer).
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Perhaps if the owner of the small Arab stallion instead had a great big clunky, bad-legged buckskin quarter horse stud it would be OK to leave him intact. Especially, if realizing said clunky stallion could never win in AQHA shows, she blamed it on predjudice judges who didn’t like her (waah, boo hoo…) and showed him instead in the Pinto Horse Association which I believe even has an english and western pleasure class for aardvarks. Solid color aardvarks at that…
Seeing as how my horse has not yet been to an AQHA show, it is a bit premature to assume he can’t win at one. The idea that he is either clunky or bad-legged is completely laughable, and I can make you a list a mile long of top trainers who school their greenies at the color circuits and open shows first – it’s called “saving money” and most people are fans of it.
You might want to change your user name to Green With Envy as it sounds to me like you are very jealous of people who have quality horses!
Oh, was that a jibe at you? I totally missed it. Ever noticed how some people will attempt to create thinly veiled insults coached in psuedo sympathetic language, only to bury their insults so firmly under drivel that no one even realizes they are trying to insult someone?
I like aardvarks. I think they are cute. It’s the long noses, I think….
What’s an aardvark? o.O
Also, is this the same person who keeps popping up bagging out the VLC with totally off topic comments?
Wow, way to spend your weekend. If you’re so jealous, why don’t you prove your horse can beat the VLC in a show? I mean, jeez..
Wow was that a lead-in to see how VLC did this weekend?
LOL.
It just seems like horses have to be laying dead on the premisis before anyone in convinced this “organization” needs to be shut down. Unsuspecting people want to do something good and donate money and time. What they dont know is that they are paying for and caring for Pat’s personal horses as well. The lines between boarder, rescue and personal horses at that farm are so vague and seem to change daily. Volunteers with big hearts and wallets but limited horse knowledge are Pat’s bread and butter. It seems they see the cute farm with the arena and the “pretty arabians” (gag…sorry arab fans) and they get swept up in wanting to help. Hell, we all got swept up in it. It just takes some longer than others to leave. I struggled with leaving because I stayed awake at night wondering who would feed the horses if I didnt. Pat was always preaching that it was about the horses yet there were times when she was unable to identify her own animals.
Yup, Pat loves animals, no doubt there. But with that love comes responsibility and the ability to recognize when you are over your head. You cannot take care of all those horses on a wing and a prayer. If you try, this is what happens. Another rescue that gives horse rescue a bad name.
Totally agree! I agonized over leaving, knowing that some days only one or two people showed up to help and that on those days the horses got short shrift. You start there to help the horses, but at some point you have to ask yourself if you’re enabling an especially pernicious form of abuse. Then, finally, you leave and take your energy to some other organization that doesn’t have oops foals, preventable deaths, unknown finanances, blurred boundaries between personal and rescue, and an endless string of excuses for why they should be forgiven those problems.
If she is always so broke, what happened to the $150,000 grant from Milgard Windows awarded in 2008? Perhaps that is funding her still? Letting horses wander a property freely is not really safe either. Especially with the amount of people coming and going. I love how they copied the SAFE show all the way down from the venue and date to the class list and sponsorship levels. Stay classy, SERR!
Yeah she’s always broke, she has NO flippin clue how to manage money whatsoever, she always lets horses roam free and the idea behind her show is a damn joke to me… NO ONE in their right mind should support this garbage…
This is a question a lot of us would like answered. Where did all this money go? The Milgard money came in Spring 2008 and according to Patricia it was gone by July. She’d be crying in the house about how she didn’t have a cent and if someone didn’t come up with $1000 by Friday the horses weren’t going to eat. She’d tell some people she had a savings account with money in it, but I was there on days when there was not one bag of grain or one flake of hay to feed over 30 horses. If she really had money in the bank wouldn’t she be using it to buy hay for HER horses?
She produced some fake financial documents that she provided to the board one day. I saw one of them and it claimed she had spent $54,000 on hay over a 12 month period. Assuming an average horse eats about 4 tons of hay a year, and hay at the time was, on the high end, $300 a ton with tax, stacked and delivered, that was enough money to feed 45 horses for an entire year. There were never 45 rescues at SERR at anyone time, so the numbers are obviously false.
In any event, we can only assume where the money went. Here is my list. Please feel free to add to it.
1. Mortgage
2. Utilities
3. Repayment of personal loans
4. Payment of arena and/or barn construction
5. Hay, grain and shavings for rescues AND personal horses
6. Purchase of personal property including vehicles and building materials
7. Salaries of barn help, who spent the majority of their time caring for non-rescues
8. Vet and farrier bills
9. Compensation to the president of SERR
Again, I am only taking a guess here at where the money went. I know that vet and farrier calls were kept to a minimum when it came to the rescues.
That grant is long gone. Totally spent.
Here’s your proof if you’d like to see it:
http://www.milgardfoundation.org/grantees_detail.htm?yy=08
The actual amount of the grant, which you will see when you click on SERR’s name on this list, was $120,000, but still…
Speaking of fugly Friesians, here’s a CL ad from my area that caused a sharp intake of breath.
http://annarbor.craigslist.org/grd/1862431408.html
I saw the ad for the Morgan mare last summer offering a free breeding to a Friesian, and I knew it was not going to end well, and here’s the result. Good luck getting 4k for a BYB foal. This just makes me sad.
Sigh.
IF that is a $4,000 colt, why are the pictures taken by a drunk monkey? Come on people– no one is going to believe you are serious if those pictures are the best you can find. You want major money for a colt? Stand him up, take his picture in a field of flowers, show his mom winning at the Garden… something. I could switch those pictures into an ad for a backyard colt, drop a zero off the price, and people would question if he was really worth $400.
Drunk monkey LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!
How many different ways can you spell bred, breed or bread.
One would think this might be helpful.
http://dictionary.reference.com/
Oh wow – I saw an absolutely gorgeous Friesian/ Morgan cross a few years ago – but then her breeders had actually selected an EXTREMELY NICE Morgan stud for their EXTREMELY NICE Friesian mare. Amazing how quality horses beget quality, isn’t it? You’d think BYB would figure that out.
Another thing that might have colored my opinion of the horse…she was actually in training for a job and doing well at it. (Eventing)
The mispellings are particularly sad. I understand that there can always be an error that gets through, but even the quickest review should have caught stub instead of stud. Honestly, don’t people read over stuff before they post it?
I wouldn’t buy any colt, and certainly not at that price, but the little guy does not look half bad, and neither do his parents. I know a couple of people with Friesian/Morgan crosses and they’re pretty nice horses.
My guess is the mare owner got taken in by someone’s promise that the foal would be worth a bundle… not in this market.
I agree with you that he’s probably a nice enough colt. But everything about this ad screams that he will not be worked with, he won’t sell, and they will wind up with an unsaleable monster on their hands. I hope I’m wrong.
http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/grd/1863312285.html
Awesome! Did someone from here post this? Wish it had been me.
Huh, interesting. Funny how “clunky” those quarters are last I checked they were bred that way. Not to mention that a stud has testosterone so naturally he will look more built. And funny too, Ive seen horrid looking halter horses. Cecil to me looks like a very balanced correct QH. And bad legs? I see flat knees, good pastures, and solid hooves.
Ok, since harping on his confo isnt working, lets stab at the Pinto shows. If youre so angry about a solid QH showing at a Pinto show, get mad at the show org for putting on the solid classes, not those who are supporting them.
Oh sad, looks like youre out of petty things to whine about.
good pasterns* not pastures!! LOL
IMHO it sounds like Patricia is afraid of horses. From what everyone has been saying the horses aren’t handled, whether her personal horses or the rescue horses either that or she not only wants them to be natural not only with regard to grooming but also in behavior. What do the people who board horses with her have to say/think about what goes on there?
I didn’t see Patricia work with any horses enought to say if she’s afraid of them or not.
I have heared that two boarders left – one after her horse didn’t get the meds he was supposed to, and another after her mare was injured and Patricia didn’t see fit to tell her.
I can’t help but laugh at this on their home page: “The lucky horses at Serenity are provided with the best medical care and lots of attention. The rehabilitation is physical and emotional for a horse that has been neglected, abandoned and abused. The turn-around that we see in our horses is more than just looks. They become affectionate, outgoing equine companions.”
So, they’re equine companions, but can they DO anything? I know of two that came back because they turned out to not be ridable.
I remember pulling into this place a couple of years ago looking for boarding. The first thing that struck me was the New Zealand wire that runs through the fence posts. If that’s not a disaster waiting to happen. I’ve had encounters with this type of fence before – No thanks. That type of fence, IMO, is worse than barb wire since it has such a high breaking strength. It can slice right through a leg without breaking. Flat-out dangerous for any horse.
I was none too impressed with the lack of any grass, all rocks and nobody around.
Ok I agree he should not be a stallion, but I do have to disagree with your assesment of his bloodlines I could not see the mares line, but the sire does have very impressive names behind him. Probat was a double or triple swedish national champion and a very good sire one of the best Exelsjor sons. I know that you probably don’t study arab lines but there are some very good names in the sires background. Just because there are not legion of honor signs behind his names does not mean that the stallion is not great. Only american shown horses get those marks. Horses that win overseas do not get legion of honors. The greatest polish bred stallion of all time Comet has not one legion of honor. Sorry I just wanted to point this out, I know it is a little off subject.
OT I know, but Damn.
http://carbondale.craigslist.org/grd/1858927224.html
and in case the original is gone…http://carbondale.craigslist.org/grd/1860124217.html
That’s just painfully sad. Someone upgrade this poor creature.
Don’t these people ever wonder if AC will be called posting a picture like that?
I’d take the pony in a heart beat, but I seriously lack the room right now.
Uh Slow Loper are u confused u did not volunteer there you worked there oh wait you were paid to work there but you never really did. Luckily enough for the horses you only spent enough time to make them head shy not kill them like your other horses. This is what I hate about the internet people like you can pass judgement when in truth you literally have skeletons in your closet. How about your oops foal and your untrained stallion? The true reason u have a beef with serenity is the fact that u were fired and abandoned your horse there for over a month. I am pretty sure Fugly herself had some issues with your “training” as well. Myabe u should have a blog done about you.
Plenty of horses get killed at Serenity- they don’t need any help. The last excuse I heard (as to why Stormy was put down) was thrush. Ummm, what rescue lets a horse’s thrush get so out of control it kills them. Doesn’t matter, that horse was at SERR for 2 years but Patricia is so erratic about adopting, it doesn’t matter.
And yes, the interenet does hide skeletons in closets otherwise SERR would have been closed after wasting $160,000 in 10.5 months (the first year). There are still no available financials or taxes for them for 2009 and they’re begging all over the internet for a personal to volunteer to help with finances/do the books. But a pretty farm and a nice website can make anyone look legitimate.
I hope no one besides Patricia and her teenage work crew show up for her show because they don’t deserve a cent. She drags them to Donida for shows, they fall off horses and then advertise the rescues as Show Horses. Yep, they advertised that paint Niko as a show horses that did great with kids when it was a kid who fell off him at the show. Yes, people hide a LOT on the internet.
I can pull up any number of rescues that have put down horses people dont agree with. No horse has had to suffer starving for months and then dying without a care not once but at least 4 times. at Serenity.
You mean like half-toothless Bandit who had been gaining weight with another rescue and came in skinny but lost weight because Patricia insisted on feeding him dry alfalfa? Alfalfa that he didn’t have enough teeth to chew. Bandit who I offered to buy alfalfa pellets for so they could be soaked so he’d have easy-to-eat food but Patricia ignored me? She didn’t even have the grace to acknowledge the suggestion.
You’re right – he didn’t starve for months, only weeks. And he didn’t die without a care, he was put down by a vet after he colicked.
The quantity of deaths of horses at Serenity is inexcusable. Patricia decides who gets to live and the quality of care they receive at the rescue. Not all of them are treated equally. I’m beginning to notice that the high profile cases that get lots of media attention seem to receive better care than anyone else.
Not only did Stormy die under mysterious circumstances, what about Chester? And what really happened to Reba? People on the board called Patricia to ask her what happened to the horse, but instead of talking to them she had a volunteer that had limited knowledge call them back. There was one older, lame, arthritic mare at SERR (maybe her name was Sarah?) that Patricia had euthanized one day. At the same time she kept sending Kiera out to be bred when Kiera was way more deformed and crippled than Sarah ever was. Then Kiera’s foal ends up on the rescue list after the mare is run through a barbed wire fence and had to be euthanized.
Understandably there are horses in rescue situations that need to be euthanized because they are too sick or severely injured. However, feeding a horse hay it couldn’t chew until it came down with colic…that is plain neglectful. It is worse than not giving your sick colt his antibiotics that were prescribed by the vet, or not putting oil in your mare’s food after it had a $4000 colic surgery because you know more than the vet that told you to do it.
Anyone that has as many euthanasias and PREVENTABLE deaths as Serenity each year has too many horses. With the limited space, knowledge, money and man-power at SERR, the facility is way too overcrowded with horses. As has been stated before. Patricia needs to get down to maybe 10 horses on the property so it can be reasonably managed and all the horses will receive adequate care.
He was under a vet care the entire time you would need to take that up with the vet
Why can’t anyone from Serenity give an answer with facts, numbers or actual details. Take it up with the vet? So now Serenity is blaming the vet. Awesome. How many vets have they gone through?
No wonder no vets stick around-a horse dies because Patricia fails to provide adequate care or medicate them and because the vet performed the euthanization you call it “vet care”. Those of us who volunteered there have seen Patricia tell vets she is medicating horses who never get the medicine… she tells adopters she has wormed and given shots that never happen. I have seen this firsthand. Want proof? Ask for shot and worming records- they don’t exist.
And you know Bandit had vet care how? Did Patricia tell you that? She never told me that, and I was a board member and the volunteer coordinator at the time. I adored Bandit and talked with Patricia about him more than once. We even talked about how thin he was in the last board meeting I attended, and there was no mention of vet care for Bandit. Does it not strike you as odd that she wouldn’t even acknowledge my question about appropriate feed for him? My offer to spend money out of my own pocket to help him?
Or is that he was under a vet’s care and she refused to follow the vet’s recommendations? That wouldn’t surprise me. I know of at least one full-care boarder who left because Patricia couldn’t be bothered to make sure her horse got necessary meds.
It’s the same-sh!t-different-day whenever Serenity comes up. Problems are pointed out, specific questions are asked, and nobody will give direct answers. There’s a whole lot of deflection “well, other rescues are worse”, “what about the horses that have been saved?”, “that was last year, it’s better now” (I call bullsh!t on that last, because I’ve yet to see any indications of the kind of change that’s needed). I was guilty of the very same things when I was still fairly new there and hadn’t yet learned the score. But I eventually put all the pieces together and realized the truth…how long will it take you to do the same?
I gave you a very specific example of a horse that was improving before he came to Serenity, was offered food he couldn’t process, dropped weight and eventually colicked and died. I cannot imagine that any vet, seeing that horse dropping weight, would have told Patricia to just put out more dry alfalfa.
If you ever do manage to pin Patricia down and ask questions, she’s got a whole litany of plausible excuses for why things never get done. And if you don’t buy her excuses, she resorts to wailing and fainting in coils…okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I have seen her cry and blame people for attacking her, but she still doesn’t fix things. I have heard her admit that she resorted to calling her doctor for meds because she can’t cope. Only the people who hang around for at least six months ever realize that she uses the very same excuses for years at a time.
But, Ladydes, you say Bandit was “under a vet care”…so, who was the vet? I will gladly call and talk to him/her. Of course, an ethical vet probably won’t talk to me about their patients, but I can still ask. To make it easy for you, you can e-mail the vet’s name and contact information to me at darcyjayne at hotmail dot com.
So, let’s talk about horsey deaths at Serenity:
These two happened while I was there:
Reba: got twisted up in fencing and severely damaged her back legs just above the pasterns. She was able to walk from the turn-out to a stall, so we know her tendons weren’t severed by the fence. She reportedly received regular vet care, and I don’t know any different. She was put down about a week after the initial injury – the vet came out to check on her, and when he got the wraps removed and the necrotic tissue cleared away, they found some good granulation around the wound, so there was some circulation. They also found that the tendons had separated. When we lead Reba out of the stall so she could be euthanized outside, she could pick up her back feet, but could not control how they came down. We were just barely able to get her out of the barn. I see her death as not lack of care, but lack of hot-tape on the fencing.
Chester: was out to foster and hurt a hoof. He came back and I heard he got regular vet care, but he wasn’t getting any better. A volunteer paid for X-rays, and they discovered that the hoof was irreparably damaged. I don’t remember now if it was just a severe and badly infected cut, or if there was something stuck up in there. Patricia didn’t allow anyone to be there when he was put down. Supposedly, the pasture where he was turned out was inspected, and I know that horses are very creative in finding ways to get hurt…but I wonder about that “inspectionâ€.
After I left, so I’m going to say only what I’m confident my sources are accurate on:
Bandit: already discussed here. When I saw him on the “Rainbow Bridge†page I asked about him and was told he colicked and had to be put down.
Kiara and Kat: put down because of injuries sustained in a dog attack. I’m told most of the injuries were from barbed wire. Even though I had been told not to come to back to Serenity barely two months before, I spoke up in there defense here on this blog, saying there was no barbed wire (I had never seen any), and Patricia didn’t bother to tell me otherwise. Turns out the mares and their babies had been put in the one turnout that I never went in. It was the only one on the property with barbed wire, it also happened to be farthest from the house and closest to those dogs, which had already come onto the property and threatened to attack more than once. Patricia even admitted that she’d talked with the Sheriff about the dogs before the attack. Who the hell puts lame mares (both were far from sound) with foals into that kind of situation, or any horse, for that matter?
Stormy (TB mare, not the mini): developed thrush and had to be put down. WTF? Serenity has some of the driest turnouts I’ve seen in this area, and the stalls are generally kept clean. I can’t imagine how that mare could have developed thrush unless there was some sort of severe neglect.
Don’t forget, Kiara (SC Kiara) was registered to Patricia Clark, with that very foal listed with Pat as his breeder. Oh and in case you want to know more about the SC, that stands for Seven Cedars: http://sevencedarsarabians.com/… you’ll see our old friend Eskont on the stallions page there.
Seven Cedars is owned by Rae Smith, Pat’s dear friend who she has owned horses with for years. In fact, several of her current Cavalia horses were once Rae’s- Lightening, Moira, Pasha, Kazmeen, Annisette (she calls Annie)…
Why is she still allowed to take rescues. I see her on T.V. occasionally and I just do not understand how a reputable news caster would interview someone who is so obviously messed up. I take in OTTB’s and do overextend myself occasionally but I have not had horses put down unless my vet has told me that is my only choice. I have been doing this for twenty + years and have only put down one for colic that was inoperable. If you have a good re-pore with your vet and farrier you can make a monthly payment plan so you do not have a big bill every time you need vet work done. I have had about three thousand in vet bills so far this year and just make monthly payments to take care of it. I think she just takes in far more than she can handle. I think she has way too many horses for the amount of land she has.
I agree with everything you just said.