It has been brought to my attention that the place where I purchased my house is Horse Free now. My horse Joey came from a Property with 35 horses (at least 1/2 are still alive). 7 were stallions, many of the mares had foals that never made it past the first week of life. Many times the horses had no water. Several of the Stallions had no shelter and the temperatures often dropped into the negative temps in the winter and in the summer the sun is intense in this High Desert Region. The horses only hoof care was a pile of rocks thrown on the ground at the water trough. (theory being that they would wear their hooves down when they came to drink)If that was not bad enough the caretakers boyfriend thought the best way to train these horses was by force. My horse was the first horse out of there in over 5 years. The owner let me purchase his cream of the crop so he could purchase hay and get the authorities off his case. After purchasing Joey we would still go by on the weekend to help feed and water. I purchased Joey on November 9th 2010. At that time he had a broken nose. On March 7th 2011 he was Gelded by a Surgical Veterinarian. I have hopefully gotten his worm load under control just this spring. He now has a Nice Healthy Shiny Coat. His feet have healed enough that he can wear Easyboots and run on semi solid ground barefoot. It has been just 3 months that he can chew normally. Just recently it seems his spine has now worked it way back to normal. All the while I have given up every thing to purchase the supplements it took to make him well. I have learned many things over this time. Most important how our feed supply is very deficient in Selenium. I learned more about Parasites than I ever wanted to know. This information has helped me to heal myself and those close to me. It also allowed me to heal my goats and dogs. The process allowed me to have extra time with my mare of 25 years. It has changed my life. As far as Joey's Relatives. We did what we could to make sure the authorities knew when they had no water. We supported the caretaker that came after the authorities stepped in convinced the owner to remove the original caretaker (and her abusive ways) give away 12 horses. The new caretaker had an impossible task of learning to take care of these horses and recruited friends to train and find them homes. The caretaker and I shared information like "What did you find in the poop this week?" It has seemed to have taken all my spare time educating the concerned neighbors that these horses would not heal over night. When the owner was to ill to know what was going on, I convinced the daughter to let another neighbor take Joey's dad and Trade an untrainable horse for another one. Joey's Dad and a cute gelding now live in non violent caring homes learning to be respectable horses. We have been told that we were a great help to the sheriff in all of this. At least 20 of the horses are still alive today. It turns out, the owner had walking pneumonia making it easier for him to be controlled by the person who was really the reason the horses were abused and neglected. If you read this please remember things are not always what they seem.