Lisa Lind-Larsen who represented herself in court, was found responsible for the emaciated and neglected conditions of Chinook and Cheyenne, her two mustangs, in a civil suit filed by the state Department of Agriculture.
In July, animal control agents found the two neglected horses on Lind-Larsen's Pacer Brook Road property. Agents found stalls with manure eight inches deep, water troughs teeming with algae and the horses badly emaciated and covered in fly bites.
Court documents have revealed new details about the conditions of the horses and Lind-Larsen's defense.
"Consequently, there is no excuse for the lack of sanitary conditions, nutrition and veterinary care that existed in July 2014," Judge Robert Vacchelli said, sitting in Hartford.
Vacchelli ruled the horses will be placed in the permanent care of the state Department of Agriculture, which can seek compensation of expenses since the time the two horses were taken.
"It would be the cost of each horse a day, which would be $50 every day since they have been here," said Raymond Connors, head of the animal control division of the state Department of Agriculture. "We are in discussion as to whether we will be asking for reimbursement."
Lind-Larsen, who is due in court again on Tuesday, could owe more than $7,500 just for the state boarding the horses. The veterinary bills she would have to pay total more than $10,000, Connors said.
Lind-Larsen told The News-Times in August she expected to get the horses back after "they got better."
In her arrest affidavit, she accepted the seizure of her horses as compensation for help she never received from the town of Redding. According to the court decision, she welcomed the help in restoring the "usual good health and excellent condition of my two mustangs."
"She thought we would fix them up and give them back to her, like we owed it to her," Connors said.
After the horses were seized, Dr. Thor Hyyppa, an equine veterinarian, evaluated the animals on July 12 using the Henneke scale.
The system rates horses on a scale from one to nine, with one indicating no fat deposits and nine indicating extreme fat deposits, according to the court decision. A score of four to six is normal.
Hyyppa gave each of Lind-Larsen's horses a score of one.
Cheyenne and Chinook were emaciated, malnourished, anemic and in need of hoof and dental care, according to Hyyppa's examination. Chinook had additional problems such as an infection in her right eye and a mild degenerative process in her hoofs, caused by standing in manure.
When the horses were seized, agents asked Lind-Larsen when the last time the animals had dental or medical visits. She said the horses didn't need a dental visit because they were mustangs and she didn't supply a date of their last vet visit, according to court documents.
Lind-Larsen in court argued her facilities were not unsanitary, claiming leaving manure in the stalls was a common technique to raise the floor level to protect the stalls from becoming flooded by storm water, according to court documents. She said the debris in the water trough, which were identified as shingles from a roof, were there to help squirrels climb out in case they fell into the water and to prevent them from drowning, the court documents stated.
Lind-Larsen said the lack of hay and feed on the property should be excused because of a legal dispute dating to 2010 that prevented her from accessing the road from her farm, according to court documents.
"The bottom line is that the judge's assessment said that she was responsible for her horses," Connors said. "No matter her excuses, she was the person responsible for those animals."
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| Recovered: What the horses look like now |
Connors said the two horses are now doing well and are gaining the appropriate amount of weight. They are still at the Department of Agriculture's animal facility in Niantic.
Lind-Larsen is still battling criminal charges stemming from the seizure of the horses.
Lind-Larsen asked in state Superior Court in Danbury last month to be admitted into an accelerated rehabilitation program, which would have erased the charges if she successfully completed two years of probation.
But Judge Susan Reynolds said Lind-Larsen was not eligible for the rehabilitation program because she was charged with a crime in 1992, and the program is offered only to first-time offenders. The nature of those charges is unclear because the record was cleared as a result of the rehabilitation program.
(News Times - Dec 2, 2014)
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