They hate because they can

Its Thanksgiving 2009. So many volunteers came out today, brought their families, scratched the horses. said very nice things about the work we do. It gave me a few idle hours and I floated between thankfulness at how well all the horses are doing and melancholy for the struggle the last 2 years have been. So I wrote about a piece of it. Originally I had names and dates and specifics but I realized that the individuals don't matter. This is a summary of a bigger story. The long version is being written but there is an essential sub-element that may be of generic value to those who think about people and horses and coming together to help them, or not.

What happened to us is not all that unusual. What surprised us was how disconnected from reality and how mean spirited it all ended up becoming.

Even now we find it hard to believe but there are people out there who hate us. We are one of many horse rescues in the Pacific Northwest. We deal almost exclusively with horses impounded by animal control agencies. You would think that good intentions would count for something. Not in this case.

There’s a woman who initially did a good thing and fostered two seized horses for animal control. Her almost immediate demands that the horses then be given to her (starting just 4 days later/before the defendant was even charged/while the seized horses still belonged to the defendant) caused a cascade of actions, reactions and mistakes that continue even now 2 years later. She blames us.

There’s a vet who tried to treat one of the horses with a bloody, paralyzed penis. The injury was already several weeks old in a situation where hours and days matter. She didn’t succeed. We had more time so we did a little better but not completely. She blames us.

When animal control (at the order of their boss) took the horses (a stallion and a colt) away from the demanding foster home, with a goal of collecting all the horses (evidence) into one location, we ended up caring for his injury and their bodies. Everybody blamed us.

The demanding foster threatened to sue the county and the county caved in. She got the horses back. We returned them nearly healed, healthy and bright eyed but still skinny. Everybody blamed us for everything and by now everybody also hates us.

Our group has pushed for animal control to pay rescues at least part of the cost of transporting , rehabilitating and adopting out these sorts of seized horses. There’s a man who likes to go to county council meetings who says as a private charitable agency we should do it for free and that we are a bad bunch for taking any county money. He hates us.

Some of these people are working with and being advised by a lawyer who lost a case where his client starved one mini horse to death and left 9 others out in a muddy field without shelter, food or water. It was one of his first cases. It didn’t go very well. His client pled guilty to 2 felony and 7 misdemeanor counts. She tried for 2 years to get the horses back so during that time we could not adopt them out. The court ordered that she pay us during those 2 years to care for the horses that she couldn't manage to feed in the first place. The lawyer hates us.

There’s a community activist that agitates for change, agitates for the efficient use of in-county resources and agitated to kick us out because we’re an out of county agency. It seems that from her perspective everybody is incompetent and needs to do as she says. I think ultimately she just hates everybody, but now, 2 years later less than 5 horses have been rescued by this county and most were sent to out of county agencies even though these people had pushed for the establishment of an in county equine rescue network. She of course hates us in particular.

This is like a case study in hate. A study in people who want to tell other people what to do. A study in people who judge other people. It’s also a study in an animal control agency paralyzed by the vitriol of a few initially well meaning but ultimately misinformed people who have gone sour. People who use hate as their justification. Primarily it's a study in wasted opportunities, other horses left to die and bad feelings all around.

Over time we have come to understand that that it is common for animal oriented charitable organizations across the country to encounter disgruntled donors, volunteers, board members, activists, adopters or just bystanders who have very specific expectations that may not be precisely met. They take these feelings as a license to tear down all the efforts of these organizations. It’s so destructive and so unnecessary. It shines a light not on the inevitable and correctable mistakes of rescues but on the very worst inside these people who hate. In our case it stole time and focus and money and enthusiasm from those of us who would try and the horses we would wish to save. In the case of the county it gave them the justification to do nothing.

Being constructive is hard. Finding out the truth is hard. Working together to make things better is hard. It didn’t happen in this case. So many unhappy people. They complained, they pointed fingers, they threatened, they maligned, they pushed us out of their county. It’s their ball game now. So how are things working out so far?



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