Wish I would have known about the sick and abused horses at this farm prior to Christmas. I purchased 2 horses from them for Christmas presents for my children. They were supposed to be "child broke", "bomb proof"... Etc. Luckily one of the quarter horses had not been at Mountain Dew Farms long enough for them to malnurish and abuse. I spoke with the previous owners-info which I had gotten off of the registration papers - and luckily Dakota was only with them a couple of weeks and had her vaccinations prior to going to the farm - so she was well and a very nice horse. I did learn from her previous owner also that they had purchased several horses from Val and two of them had Strangles. Val told us she vaccinated their horses for Strangles but obviously she does not!
However, the other horse they delivered to us, "Cal", was extremely sick and we had to have the vet out here the very first day. When we informed Val of this she insisted the horse was fine and "Cal" was just lazy and liked to lay down a lot. After a week of the horse not getting any better and the vet saying it could be a neurological problem that was irriversible, we convinced Val to take the horse back but she would not give us a refund.instead she traded us for another horse which she said was very well broke and "would come to meet you in the field"! Well, to say the least, "Cowboy", does not come to meet us in the field. He is scared to death of people and won't let anyone even get close to him. A victem of abuse I am sure. It has been almost two months now and after working with him on a daily basis, he will grab a treat out of our hand if we stand there quietly long enough. Once he grabs the treat he backs off immediatley. We have yet to be able to pet him or brush him because he doesn't trust people anymore enough to let us do that. When he first came here he had a lot of large hairless patches on his sides which I thought may have been old scars where the hair didn't grow, but in just over the two months he has been with us his hair is growing back in and are hardly noticable. It was obviously fresh injuries he had on him that he received while being in the less than ideal conditions at mountain dew farms. Val refused to listen to us when we told her about him and insisted that he came up to them in the field all the time and she couldn't believe that he would come to us! Obviously I know now that everything she said was a lie. I just hope this horse learns to trust people again and learns that he won't be abused no more.
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