Joanie Osgood, 58, of Concord was convicted last year on three counts of animal cruelty. She has appealed the misdemeanors to Merrimack County Superior Court and was granted a retrial. Her trial will be rescheduled for later this spring and is expected to last two days.
Osgood was one of two people arrested in 2014 and accused of neglecting horses at the property of Bert Southwick, an elderly Northfield farmer. Southwick, who has since died, was a fixture in the community, having delivered eggs for more than seven decades on a horse-drawn buggy.
The other owner, Harold Kelley, 60, of Laconia pleaded guilty last year to two misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. As part of a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to pay $6,000 to an animal rescue facility in Chichester where the horses were taken.
Before the deal, Kelley sued the rescue facility and the Northfield police, claiming they never notified him about concerns or gave him a chance to address them. Kelley removed police from the complaint after the conviction, but still argued that the rescue facility, Live and Let Live Farm, had illegally seized his horse. A judge dismissed the suit last fall.
Kelley was a caretaker at Southwick’s farm. He told police before his arrest that he had been struggling to balance two jobs while caring for his aging mother, on top of managing several horses at the farm. Investigators said Osgood had been boarding three horses at the farm but had not visited since 2011.
When the horses were seized in June 2014, police reported that they severely malnourished, dehydrated and experiencing muscle atrophy.
The barn where they were staying was poorly ventilated and sagging at its sides. The floor was coated in excrement, beams and rafters collapsed, and roofing blown away.
(Concord Monitor - Apr 7, 2016)
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