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You all tell tales of overzealous Humane Society offices while I  
can't get a single rescue group to interfere with a local man whose  
elderly horse is emaciated, crippled, and lacks shelter.  How do you  
get these guys off their duffs?

Here's the summary:  A friend of a friend's father-in-law is the  
eccentric man who owns the horse.  The daughter-in-law is horrified  
by its condition but is scared to do anything because of family  
politics.   (This sounds wimpy but if you knew the family she married  
into you'd understand perfectly.)  So, MY friend says she's going to  
call, but, unbeknownst to me, doesn't.  Several weeks later I ask  
what happened.  She confesses that she didn't call.  I sigh, say,  
fine, I don't know the guy, I'll call.

I called animal control and the humane society.  Neither will even  
investigate.  I told them the approximate location, plenty of details  
to find the place (e.g., "turn right on X street, his house is at the  
end of the road).  They said they needed the exact address.  I say,  
fine, I and my three little kids will drive down the scary man's  
private road to see if we can find the exact address, stay on the  
line please.  I drive down the spooky, loooong road, past over a mile  
of mountains of collected junk--we're talking pipes and culverts big  
enough to be used on the 520 floating bridge--until we see the  
house.  There's no number of course, so we drive back, and read the  
guy the two addresses on the mailboxes for the private drive.  He  
says, "we need the exact address."  I say, "ok, I gave you twice what  
you need."  He then explained that he couldn't even file my report  
because my friend was the person who was making the complaint.  (The  
one who had not called).   He said he needed her to call because  
she'd seen the horse.  I cheered up and said perkily, "oh, perfect,  
I've seen the horse too."  He asked, "in the past week?"  I admitted  
that it had been several weeks but that I'd asked the daughter-in-law  
that morning if the horse was still in miserable shape and she'd said  
yes, he was still limping around the junk-filled property, with  
hooves that were turning up, an obvious injury to one front knee, and  
with every rib showing, and that there was still no shelter.  In  
fact, a neighbor had gotten mad at the owner for letting his horse  
wander so the man had tied it to the fence by the neck for the past  
three days with no water (during which time there was a horrific ice  
& wind storm.) He said that isn't good enough; it's hearsay.  I said  
it wouldn't be hearsay if he were to go check the horse for himself.   
Then I sighed and said fine, I'll tell my friend to call you.  He  
said that I should explain to her that she needed to know that she  
had to be certain enough to be willing to go to court to testify  
against the owner in court, and to risk being fined if the horse were  
judged to be in satisfactory condition.

Despite his dire warnings, my friend finally called.  She called me  
back, amazed, and said she didn't know what else she could have  
said.  He said SHE had to have seen the horse in the past 24 hours.   
She was on a car-trip in another state.....

I am utterly mystified.  The kicker was when he whined, "Ma'am, we  
only have 4 officers" when I said he could have driven by and checked  
the horse himself in the amount of time we'd been we'd been on the  
phone.  I finally said, "I do not understand, are you afraid to go  
there?  The guy's an off-the-grid whacko but he's not a dangerous  
whacko.  He's not going to shoot anyone."  That hit a nerve dead-on.   
He was too scared to go investigate.  Can't they take a cop or  
something??  I'm going to go shoot the horse myself pretty soon if I  
can't figure something out.  Ok, I'm not going to shoot the horse.   
But what the heck can I do at this point??

Any ideas are welcome.

Mary K.

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