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Case #5143 Rating: 2.7 out of 5
Horse rescue neglect - 13 seized
Pleasant Gap, PA (US)Incident Date: Saturday, Jul 2, 2005
County: Centre
Disposition: Convicted
Defendant/Suspect: Ginger Reynolds
Case Updates: 1 update(s) available
The SPCA seized 13 horses this month from R Farm Equine Rescue and has filed animal-cruelty charges against operator Ginger Reynolds, local SPCA Manager John Matrisciano confirmed on July 20.
Reynolds briskly defended herself, saying that only four horses at her rescue mission were in bad shape and that they were brought to her that way. She and her volunteers had been working to rehabilitate them, she said.
"We didn't do anything bad," Reynolds said. "We tried to do something good."
Because an investigation is underway, Matrisciano offered few details. He did say the horses, seized July 2, were found in varying degrees of health.
Another horse at the farm had been suffering severe ailments and was euthanized, Reynolds and other sources confirmed. Reynolds, 35, said she already had arrangements in place to put the animal to sleep.
Matrisciano said the charges against Reynolds -- summary violations -- were filed with District Judge Daniel Hoffman. Hoffman's office reported that it couldn't make the charges public Wednesday because Reynolds had not yet received them.
Reynolds said the rescue operation, off Garbrick Road near Pleasant Gap, began in October 2003 and had at least 150 volunteers who visited on a regular basis. In the past 18 months, she said, the farm placed 64 horses with adoptive owners.
But a volunteer and a horse donor to R Farm both described a rescue in disarray. They said Reynolds appeared to start with good intentions, then slowly lost control.
"There weren't enough volunteers to keep the place clean," said Rillan Anthony, a volunteer who kept her own horse at the farm. She said as many as seven volunteers may have been visiting the farm by late June. At that point, Anthony said, the operation "was rapidly going downhill.
"We couldn't seem to convince her (Reynolds) that some of the horses needed medical care," she said.
In late June, Reynolds began spending most of her time in Hershey, where her son is hospitalized. Reynolds said the hay supply was dwindling when she left, but that she had left money for temporary caretakers to buy more.
And, Reynolds said, she has records to illustrate the thousands of dollars in medical care she has provided to her horses.
Kim Fenstermacker, a friend of Reynolds who worked at the farm, said Reynolds "tried her best to keep the barn clean.
"Yeah, toward the end, it got a little iffy," Fenstermacker said. "But she was there trying to clean it out."
One problem, Anthony said, was the impending cessation of water service at the farm. In Reynolds' absence, she said, volunteers were trying to make contingency arrangements.
"We were frantic because we couldn't get in touch with Ginger easily," Anthony said. "We had run out of hay, and we were down to our last bits of grain. ... The horses that were turned out in the pasture had been eating it down because it's been so dry, the grass wasn't growing."
But Jim Dyke, Reynolds' ex-boyfriend and former R Farm worker, said the horses did have grain and water. "She (Reynolds) didn't just walk away from them," Dyke said. He said Reynolds has saved "probably a couple hundred horses from slaughter."
"Ginger is the kind of person who has a real big heart for animals," he said. "She sacrificed a lot of her own personal resources to keep that thing going."
Matrisciano said anyone who donated a horse to R Farm and wants to reclaim it would need to provide owner documents.
Reynolds said R Farm was the legal owner of all the horses kept there, except those that were boarded or belonged personally to her.
"There's nothing I hate more than people who abuse children and animals," Reynolds said. "To me, they're the ugliest people in the world, and to be put into that category is a difficult thing."
Case UpdatesThe Pennsylvania Superior Court has upheld the rulings of a Centre County Court of Common Pleas judge and a district judge that found a Pleasant Gap horse farm operator guilty of two counts of cruelty to animals last year.
At a hearing in September 2005 before District Judge Daniel Hoffman, Ginger D. Reynolds, in her mid-30s, was convicted of two counts of cruelty to animals.
The charges stemmed from conditions on the R. Farm Equine Rescue Center near Pleasant Gap.
The Centre Hall SPCA seized horses from the farm on July 2, 2005, shut down the center and brought animal cruelty charges against Reynolds.
Reynolds was accused of keeping as many as 14 horses in unsanitary conditions and depriving them of adequate water and shelter, according to the court documents.
One citation alleged that one horse was so badly injured that it couldn't put any weight on one leg.
That horse, named Flight, later had to be euthanized, according to court documents.
Reynolds has denied the allegations, and stated in court documents that she left R. Farm Equine Rescue two weeks before the citations being issued to be at the bedside of her ailing son.
Reynolds told the court she left the horses in the care of neighbor during that time, but the courts said that a family medical emergency was not an excuse for the horses' living conditions.
Hoffman found her guilty of one count of cruelty for the horse that needed to be euthanized, and another that was based on the general condition of 14 animals on the property.
He ordered her to pay restitution totaling $12,121.50 plus costs.
Reynolds appealed the convictions, and Centre County Judge Thomas King Kistler upheld the lower court's decision but increased the amount of restitution to $16,316.50.
Reynolds appealed again, to the state Superior Court.
In a ruling that was handed down last week, the state Superior Court ruled that Kistler and Hoffman were right in finding that Reynolds had failed to provide necessary veterinary care to the horse that died and kept the animals in subpar conditions. | Source: Centre Daily - Dec 13, 2006
Update posted on Dec 14, 2006 - 1:03AM |
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