I stumbled upon a happy ending last night!

I was googling trying to find the phone number for Dr. Sara Perkins, the vet, in Rainier when I found this blog.

http://spencersnewlife.blogspot.com/


I immediately wondered if that was the horse I had posted about here on the blog. A few e-mails and I found out I was right!

Remember the large free horse Craigslist post that we were all livid about? The draft stallion that you could have if you could catch? Well, today we can all give kudos to a wonderful lady named Pat Wagner, because she stepped up and took him in after he was acquired at that point by someone who did not have the right set-up for a big, spoiled draft stallion.


(Which does beg the question: Good grief, what is the right set-up for a big, spoiled draft stallion? Yeesh. My roomies were kind of wanting to save him and I just thought, uh-uh. I could just see him merrily running around the Microsoft campus, trailing streamers of coated wire fencing behind him...)

Unsurprisingly, Spencer came to her with lots of neglect related problem. Witness Spencer's hoof. LOVELY. Jesus H. Christ people, don't HAVE drafts if you're not going to take care of the feet.


Thanks to Pat, Spencer now knows what the vet looks like (bet that was a new experience!), is now a gelding, and is learning to socialize with other horses. His feet are improving. Hooray!

And who, pray tell, was the genius who let Spencer get into this condition, who completely failed to train and socialize a 1900 lb. stallion, who then dumped him to the first taker on Craigslist? Was it some meth-cooking Pierce County bottom-feeder with a mullet, a trailer, and a barbed wire fence?


Nope. It was a DAMN DOCTOR. WTF. He came from Malia Arabians & Warmbloods in Eatonville, Washington, which is owned by Dr. John and Tina Diller. The Dillers are breeding all kinds of silly shit. Of course they are breeding "American Warmbloods," AKA Grade Horses We Gave A Fancy Name To In The Hopes Of Improving Their Value. The Dillers aren't hurting for cash. Their lovely web site is full of professional pictures of their horses. Their facility appears to be clean and well maintained. They have a trainer or some sort of exercise rider - their sale horses are well presented and high priced. The cheapest one is $7500.

The Dillers had NO EXCUSE. NO EXCUSE AT ALL for what they did. They have the money to have had Spencer gelded and trained so that he could have a future if he had not worked out for their breeding program. But they didn't want to do that. They wanted to throw their problem out into the world and make someone else fix it.

Pat is fixing it. But WHY THE FUCK should she have to? You people are disgusting. You ought to be sending Pat the next $7500 you make selling one of your horses for the rehab and training on the one you threw out the door somehow thinking, in this era of the Internet, that this irresponsible act would not be traced back to you. Bzzzzzt, you lose.

You're bragging on your web site about the fact that you've been breeding since 1965. In 43 years, you haven't learned how to breed horses responsibly? Sad. Sad. Sad.

I sound like a broken record because I just keep seeing the same scenarios. I am so damn sick of breeders dumping their "culls" and failed experiments without a thought as to the animal's wellbeing. If that is how you want to operate, GET OUT OF THE LIVE ANIMAL BUSINESS! Manufacture something that doesn't feel pain or hunger or confusion or fear! Then when you F up, you can dump it and no one will care.

Spencer is very lucky that he's safe but it's no thanks to you, Dr. John and Tina Diller of Eatonville. Again, an innocent person who didn't create the expensive and hard-to-handle mess is cleaning it up. There aren't enough of us to clean up after you irresponsible folks, and we don't have enough money. JUST STOP BREEDING.

~~~~~~~
Updated to add a note from Pat, his owner, about how she came to acquire him:

Thanks Guys! I'm blushing. But Spencer sort of found me. A customer happened upon the CL about needing a farrier for a draft. I was on my way home from a full day of trimming hooves and picked up my Blackberry and see this email about a farrier needed. Clicked on the number and arranged to drive right past my home to the home of the gal who spend 3 hours trying to catch him before she finally did. And she has a baby about 4 months before that. Determined Gal! It wasn't long before her family suggest she find a new home for him and she called me. I had actually expressed an interest in him because of his awful hooves.

The picture of his hoof is one I took right after I arrived. She had just taken a soaking boot off his hoof (all his hooves were/are filled with abscesses - not just one, but many) so she was trying to do the right thing.

So his hooves are bad, but that picture makes it look actually worse than it is. That's matted hair at the top of the hoof. Not hoof. Still, when I got him home the abscess rupture site was bleeding from all the activity. Keep up with his progress at Spencersnewlife.blogspot.com.