What Animal Control's Report Means to Me

  Part 1

Even today I cannot look at this report without getting upset. It brings all the pain of her exploitation to the surface. What Angie Miller and Richard Galarza of Opus Arabians did put me off balance and undermined my confidence but this thing with Kelly Panowicz has made me feel vulnerable and powerless in a way I have not felt since I was a small child as I was overpowered, tortured and raped.
http://risingrainbow.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-sting.html
The report made it perfectly clear that Kelly Panowicz had deliberately tricked me to take the horses of her choosing. Once she had what she could get from me she was no longer concerned with how I viewed her instead she was focused on justifying her behavior. The proof of that laid in those numbers.

It could be argued that some of them were based on perception that's for sure. The problem was when Kelly Panowicz sat in my living room and swindled me out of Scandalous Mr Goodbar, she claimed her county would seize my entire herd because of the thinness of one aged mare,  Bey Aana........not twenty-seven starving horses.  One horse whose condition has always been worrisome to me.

Even as sick as I was, Kelly Panowicz would not have been able to trick me into believing nearly all of my horses were starving.  She sure as h*ll wouldn't have been able to manipulate EF into believing she had my best interests at heart with a lie like that
 Without EF, Kelly would have gotten nowhere getting a horse from me. It was my trust in my friend that made me think Kelly was genuine.

The more I resisted Kelly's attempts to manipulate me into believing my horses would be better off if I gave them all away, the harder she pushed back about Aana's condition. It was easy for her to exploit my fears about my horses when she was pointing the finger at Aana because I always worry about her.

 I have struggled with keeping good weight on that mare right from the first day I got her. Any change in her life and she responds with weight loss. She reacted to the loss of Solidare and its resulting change in herd dynamics. I had not been able to get her back to her former weight by the time I got sick. Even today she is still insecure about her place in the herd. Her weight still fluctuates as the mares try to figure out who their new herd leader will be. Aana's weight will probably become more stable only if the others will quit trying to move up in the hierarchy that is the band of mares Solidare ruled.

Aana is the oldest horse on my farm and she shows her age more than other old horses I have been exposed to.  I imagine that is because she has always been a hard keeper. Between her insecurities and her advancing age, I am always concerned about Aana.

With that and my insecurities caused by being so sick, she was the perfect horse for Kelly to focus on. Chances are I led Kelly without even realizing straight to the vulnerability caused by my concern for Aana and she recognized the potential it represented. I was ripe to be manipulated by a con artist like Kelly. She is just the one who got here first.

Had she sat in my living room and tried to convince me that all of my horses were starving, which is what those numbers on the report mean, I would not have bought that. Horses cannot go downhill that fast when they are being feed regularly and these horses had not missed a meal. I may have been sick but I had not totally lost my mind.

My initial resistance to her manipulations was based on my knowledge of their condition before I got sick and my daily follow-up on their care. She was trying to convince me of things that didn't make sense to me.

When she  realized I wasn't buying my whole herd was in serious trouble, she changed her focus to the one horse that is always thinner than the rest. The one horse I had probably indicated as a problem. Then she claimed AC would take them all because of Aana.

The lie that Animal Control in her county has the authority to seize a whole herd based on the condition of one went right over my head and that of EF. But I was sure that EF would see the discrepancy between claiming one was bad enough to warrant seizure and ALL but two. That's a pretty big difference.

Then there was the lie about this all being because she cared about the horses. If that were true, why did it take her two months to file a complaint with AC? Had my horses really been body scores of 1.5 to 2.5 in Sept, some would easily have died by the time she got around to reporting.

There is another bit of proof that Kelly lied about everything. Horses in the type of condition she described do not generally recover in the few weeks it had been since she came to my farm. Occasionally one or two individuals in a herd the size of mine might recover quickly but certainly not an entire herd. .

The fact Animal Control found Kelly's complaint to be unfounded was because the horses were all healthy and there were no indicators they had ever been at risk. If there had been any signs of jeopardy, they would be monitoring the horses to assure they stay safe. 

I was sure these were the things that would prove to EF that Kelly Panowicz with forethought of malice came to my farm and made victims out of me, Dave, Lindsay and even EF. She destroyed my reputation which in turn made it difficult for me to sell horses.

The long term effects are yet to be determined but there is one thing she did not take away from me. That is my friendship with EF. It has been changed but we will get through it. With this report from AC I finally had what I needed to show EF what Kelly was really up to when she came to my farm. It would take me awhile to heal enough to confront this elephant standing between us but at least I knew I could get it done once my body had healed enough to take this on.Kelly Panowicz made a big mistake when she called Animal Control and filed her false report. She just didn't know it yet.

To be continued....

 The Trainer's Words on AC's Visit

Note: I haven't been able to post the actual document in a manner that is very readable. If anyone known how I can get it done, I would appreciate input.
Here is what I have. If you click on it so it shows it by itself it is bigger but still hard for me and anyone who needs bigger print.