Animal Abuse: 5 horses, 3 sheep, goat seized - Garrison, NY | Pet-Abuse.Com Animal Cruelty Database

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Case ID: 9317

Classification: Neglect / Abandonment

Animal: horse, sheep, goat

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5 horses, 3 sheep, goat seized
Garrison, NY (US)

Incident Date: Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006
County: Putnam

Charges: Misdemeanor
Disposition: Dismissed (Conditional)

Person of Interest: Alexander Saunders

Case Updates: 2 update(s) available

Alexander "Sandy" Saunders, who helped form state-sanctioned agricultural districts to preserve rural life and has an address book of influential friends, was charged with nine counts of animal neglect.

Saunders returned home from a business trip last week to find that Putnam County sheriff's deputies had taken his animals - three horses, two ponies, three sheep and a goat - citing animal neglect. He said he had no indication there were complaints and denied any neglect.

Deputies came to the property July 11, with a search warrant in hand and a licensed veterinarian in tow, and rounded up the animals, which they said were living in "repulsive" surroundings and suffering from multiple health maladies - hoof problems, parasitic infections and emaciation.

"This is just a malicious act," Saunders said a day before his arrest. He said the accusations were retaliation for his hosting of a Jackson Browne concert June 3 for Democratic congressional candidate John Hall and his urging Putnam County to approve a farmland protection plan, in addition to his strong opposition to building ball fields on the former Mahopac Airport. Saunders used the 1940s grass airfield to land and store his small plane.

Saunders said yesterday that the animals were living in "horse and sheep heaven."

"The animals were seized for suspected neglect," said Capt. William McNamara of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, adding an eyewitness had filed a complaint.

The Sheriff's Office said a veterinarian examined the animals and determined that almost all had hoof or foot ailments and that a horse, pony and sheep were lame. The horses and ponies had dental problems, and the sheep had skin infections, and one was "scalded by urine." The floor of the stable was "more than a foot deep in urine-soaked manure in places ... and the air in the stables was acrid and so repulsive as to make their entry into the stable difficult."

The animals are being cared for at various farms, McNamara said, and one pony might have to be destroyed. Deputy Sheriff Barbara Dunn, president of the Putnam County Humane Society, processed Saunders at court yesterday. He turned himself in at the Philipstown sheriff's substation at 7:45 a.m. on July 18, his 67th birthday. He is due to answer the misdemeanor charges Sept. 13. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to one year in jail and fined up to $1,000 on each count.

A baby lamb on Saunders' propery was not taken by the sheriff. A herd of 40 Black Angus cattle on his adjacent property also was not seized.

The farm's two-story barn on 100 acres off Old Albany Post Road is where Saunders' family has lived for 200 years and where his 90-year-old mother, Marie Saunders, still lives. He has hosted square dances since 1985 with many illustrious attendees, including Gov. George Pataki, who lives in Garrison and whose family owned a farm in Peekskill; folk singer Pete Seeger of Beacon; writers, artists and environmentalists living nearby; and elected town and county officials.

Alexander Kaspar of Putnam Valley, the former head of Putnam County's Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board, said yesterday that he was shocked by the arrest. He runs a horse farm at the former Cimarron dude ranch and has had his own run-ins with local officials for zoning and building violations.

"I am upset, really upset. There is absolutely nothing to this," said Kaspar, adding that two weeks ago he visited the farm, five miles from his own spread.

"These are farm animals, not household pets," he said. "There's no shred of evidence anything is wrong."

The farm is one of 50 in Putnam County that are protected and designated as farmland through the state's Department of Agriculture and Markets, said Marilyn Howard, field adviser for the New York Farm Bureau, a lobbying group. She is responsible for farms in Sullivan, Ulster, Dutchess, Orange, Rockland, Putnam, and Westchester counties.

Howard visited Saunders' farm last week and said that, although she did not observe the animals, she saw the barn, pasture area, drums of grain and bales of hay.

"I think they are overzealous," she said. "People are looking to protect animals, which is a good thing. But, sometimes they don't know what they are looking at when dealing with farm animals."

Case Updates

A Putnam prosecutor and popular Garrison farmer Alexander "Sandy" Saunders struck a deal in September that puts on hold the animal-neglect charges Saunders was facing and means the nine animals seized from his 150-acre farm will not be returning there.

Saunders, 68, agreed to give up the animals and to not own most other livestock in the future. In exchange for that and other conditions, the Putnam County District Attorney's Office in six months will dismiss the nine misdemeanor counts of animal neglect that Saunders was facing and that could have brought him nine years in jail and fines up to $10,000 if he was convicted on all counts. Saunders is still facing a harassment charge involving two of his former boarders.

The arrangement largely ends a case that garnered widespread attention both from animal-rights advocates and from longtime friends of Saunders, a founder of Clearwater and a well-know advocate for Putnam County's fading rural way of life.

"I'm just glad it is resolved," said Saunders, surrounded by a handful of supporters after yesterday's two-hour negotiating session in Philipstown Town Court ended. "I can get back to my farming business."

Putnam County Sheriff's Deputy Barbara Dunn, who investigates the county's most serious animal-abuse cases and is the Putnam County Humane Society board president, said yesterday that she was "very happy" with the outcome.

"He is an older man with no criminal record," she said. "The whole case was about the welfare of the animals."

Sheriff's deputies, accompanied by a veterinarian and a search-and-seizure warrant, removed three horses, three sheep, two ponies and a goat from Saunders' Old Albany Post Road farm on July 11, saying they were kept in unhealthy conditions and deprived of proper sustenance.

Saunders agreed to forfeit his six animals and accept that three horses boarded at his farm will return to their Mohegan Lake owners. He will pay $6,000 for the care of his animals since their seizure and agreed he would not own livestock living in the barn in the future. He will be allowed to board animals there as long as their owners sign an agreement saying they will be solely responsible for the maintenance of the animals and the cleanliness of the barn.

Saunders' 40 Black Angus cattle herd, which are kept on an adjoining property and were not suspected of being neglected, are unaffected by the deal.

All the animals - the boarded horses and Saunders' livestock - were expected to be adopted by new owners, Dunn said, noting that press attention had generated inquiries from farm owners who had volunteered to take the animals. They are being housed at a farm in Gaylordsville, Conn., run by Jo Ellen Cimmino, a New York state licensed veterinary technician who was present when the animals were taken. She was set to testify against Saunders.

"There was urgency here. The condition of the barn warranted removing the animals," Cimmino said. "The animals were skin and bones. They had diarrhea and open sores, and were lethargic."

In accepting the stipulation, Town Justice Stephen G. Tomann ended testimony which had included more than 40 photographs of the animals and the barn along with graphic descriptions of suspected unsanitary conditions and health concerns. There was also testimony from those familiar with Saunders' barn who said the animals were not sickly and Saunders was a conscientious caretaker.

"I am glad you could reach a practical solution to what appears to be a practical problem," Tomann said, suggesting it was unclear if time limits in the state's Agriculture and Markets law had been strictly followed.

Saunders still faces a misdemeanor charge of aggravated harassment against two sisters, whose three horses were boarded at the farm. He is due back in Philipstown Town Court Oct. 12. Laura and Jennifer Bendick said Saunders made more than 60 telephone calls to them beginning July 11 and the women were to be witnesses in the neglect case.

Source: The Journal News - Sept 13, 2006
Update posted on Nov 9, 2006 - 10:15AM

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THERE are 1,000 ceramic bells on Alexander Saunders' farm. They tinkle sweetly in the breeze across the river from Storm King Mountain, where Mr. Saunders' father helped give birth to the environmental movement back in the 1960's with the successful fight against a proposed Con Ed hydroelectric plant.

There's a slalom course of mylar wind socks he traverses in his Volvo station wagon, a sea serpent made of rocks, a hollow ghost of a Munch-like sculpture, a herd of boxcar cows - all part of a fanciful sculpture exhibition that local artists have mounted on his 140-acre farm, part of his self-appointed role as a keeper of the spirit of the Hudson Valley past and present.

But there wasn't a sliver of magic yesterday morning at a second-floor courtroom in nearby Philipstown, where - with a legal shuffle here and an official finding of adjournment in contemplation of dismissal there - an ugly animal cruelty case against him seemed on the verge of going away. The gash in the civic spirit here could last a good bit longer.

Two months after animal cruelty charges were filed against him, a lot of people are still trying to figure out just what happened when Mr. Saunders, 67, a mainstay of the Hudson Valley environmental community, was arrested on July 18. Officials said they responded to complaints to find horses, sheep and a goat in "shocking" condition: emaciated, with hoof ailments and skin infections, and living in manure in a fetid barn.

This struck many people as very odd, since Mr. Saunders' barn might be the most public one in the region. In the five weeks before the animals were seized, an annual barn dance was held that brought out perhaps 200 people, and a fund-raiser for John Hall, a Democratic candidate for Congress, that 150 people attended. An independent film was shot there. Krista Osborn visited in July with her 2-year old twin daughters. "I have visited dozens of farms over the past seven years with my four children and the Saunders' farm is one of the cleanest and well maintained I have come across,'' she later wrote in an open letter in Mr. Saunders' defense.

TO those involved in local agriculture, like Alexander Kaspar and Ken Kleinpeter, what happened is likely an increasingly familiar clash between the world of the farm and the world of suburban animal advocates, with Mr. Saunders guilty of owning a barn that was kept, well, like a barn. That the arresting deputy with the Putnam County Sheriff's Department, Barbara Dunn, is president of the local Humane Society did not help.

"If the conditions there justified seizing his animals, then any of us is vulnerable,'' Mr. Kaspar said. And Rodney W. Dow, one of his neighbors and a former SUNY agriculture professor, wrote in the local newspaper: "There is not an animal farmer that I have seen that at sometime during the year does not have his animals standing in manure. Farming is not like having a kitty litter box that you can empty out once a week and refill with clean litter."

To Mr. Saunders the issue is broader. "The busybody mind-set in America the beautiful, land of the free, has been there before, but it's been out there a lot less than it is now."

But of course one person's busybody is another's protector of the weak and defenseless. And Ms. Dunn displayed pictures of the animals in what looked like squalid conditions. She offered assessments from three veterinary assistants, and showed before-and-after pictures of the animals, allegedly now doing much better.

Mr. Saunders raises a more basic question: Why seize the animals and uproot them from their home? Why not give him some notice of things that needed to be improved? But Ms. Dunn said conditions were so conducive to infection that the animals' recovery depended on being removed: "If I left the animals there it would be a further act of cruelty," she said.

Mr. Saunders strongly disagrees. But with the lawyer's meter running and his case now on an animal rights Web site called pet-abuse.com, it made more sense to make it go away than to keep fighting. He's out $6,006.82 for boarding and care of the seized animals. He'll lose his animals, his old farm friends, but will be able to board animals that the owners will care for. It's better than a protracted court case, and who knows, maybe Ms. Dunn is right and it's better for the animals, too.

But it's a long way from the sweet vision of man and beast, earth, wind and sky back at the farm his family has owned for a century, where a thousand ceramic bells tinkle sweetly in the breeze.

Source: NY Times - Sept 13, 2006
Update posted on Sep 13, 2006 - 8:30AM

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5 horses, 3 sheep, goat seizedGarrison, NY (US)

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5 horses, 3 sheep, goat seized
Garrison, NY (US)