When Good Rescues Go Bad

Anybody still here?  I know I’ve got some explaining to do and I may get that in another post, but it’s not all that exciting.  Short version is that I have the attention span of a gnat and keeping up a blog is a lot of work.  Keeping up one that is so close to my heart, is even more so.  So, shiny objects, life, boots on the ground etc.  will have to suffice for excuses for now.  The other issue is, as I’m sure you all know, Ole Suey fell off her perch and Douchebag Duquette skulked off to park his head up the ass of Forrest Lucas meaning the immediate threat from them was over.  I can’t claim mission accomplished, because none of that was my doing, but we kept the spotlight shining where it needed to be at the time and we got the word out.  Now, another issue has finally pissed me off to the point I have felt the need to resurrect this blog and address it.  It’s an issue we briefly touched on a few years ago and I fully admit, my position on certain parties has done a complete 180.  Are you ready?  Pull up a seat and let’s get into it.

So, while I have been busy not keeping this particular blog up to date, I haven’t exactly been living in a vacuum.  I’m still involved in the anti-slaughter stuff and I’m very well versed in the rescue wars that rage on and the kill pen brokers that continue to spin their lies at the expense of horses.  The more things change….However, when you have a high profile rescue with extremely questionable ethics and a notorious broker with zero ethics, joining forces, you have a perfect storm of fuckery and horses are going to suffer more than usual.  Dear readers, that is exactly what is going down right now as I write this.  HiCaliber Horse Rescue out of Valley Center, California has hooked up with one Tara Michelle Sanders from the Thompson Lot out of Louisiana and 20 horses are about to get royally screwed.  This means HiCaliber is about to get a lot of money to pay some bills and line their pockets.  Poor Tara doesn’t aim as high so she’s just going to get her regular exorbitant mark up.  I’m sure she’ll be fine though because she’s just tapped into a large village of idiots who live behind their computers getting their `high’ by saving horses online.  Of course they only get motivated with the last minute saves because real rescue doesn’t get them moist like faux rescue.  The background to this saga is the fate of 16 OTTBs that are allegedly on the lot belonging to Tara’s boyfriend and his father.  I say allegedly because only a few are tattooed and some are crossbreds.  This is pretty much business as usual for Tara and Jacob except one horse came in with an ulcerated upper lip.  They claimed it was a burned off tattoo from an off track TB and it may well be, but it also might not be as it looks suspiciously like the mouth ulcers a horse gets when they get into things like foxtails and there is no sign of ink between the two sores as there would be in a real tattoo.  So, not saying it is or it isn’t, but the fact of the matter is that one picture created a stink and generated a lot of attention.  All of a sudden a lot of people were very interested in these horses and that’s where the unholy alliance of Tara Michelle Sanders and HiCaliber Horse Rescue incubated.

HiCaliber Rescue out of southern California love nothing better than media attention.  They have been trying to get a reality show happening for quite some time and never miss an opportunity to get their name in the press.  They actually used to be a pretty decent rescue and this blog has even given them some credit in the past.  Sadly, somewhere along the way of the last few years, HiCaliber kinda lost the plot and rather than be all about the horses, became all about the money and the numbers.  They made a deal with a well known local Kill buyer, David Misner and his son Bubba and stumbled across a similar business model to Tara’s.  Tell your followers that death from slaughter is imminent for the horses you want and mark up the price so you got a little for your pocket…or a lot.  There are two main differences though.  The first is that Tara is getting rid of horses off her feed bill, while HiCaliber keep bringing more and more in to get warehoused on their small plot of land.  The other big difference is almost amusing if it wasn’t costing so many lives.  HiCaliber claim to be saving horses from slaughter, but they fail to mention that shipping to slaughter in Southern California is illegal, so them knowing that Misner aka Voldy intends to do that, they are actually turning a blind eye to illegal activity.  Organizations have begged them for their help in exposing Misner and the Ontario auction for covertly supplying the slaughter pipeline and they have flat out said they are not interested in shutting them down because that is their main source of horses and, as Michelle has often claimed on camera, she’s a business woman and she has to keep bringing in `product’ aka horses for her adopters or they won’t keep coming back.  So yeah, that isn’t exactly rescue and they are either turning a blind eye to somebody illegally shipping to slaughter or they are lying.  Take your pick.   Tara, on the other hand, openly threatens that the trucks are coming and horses are shipping but neglects to tell her followers that they don’t actually have a contract to ship to slaughter, so they are low level traders at best.  That’s not to say that some of their horses don’t end up at slaughter, but the trucks aren’t coming like they claim and none of them are really scheduled.  That’s just high pressure tactics and that worka for the at home adrenaline junkies refreshing their pages and flicking their beans over those last minute saves.  I’m sure they all need a good smoke afterwards.

 

Ok, let’s get back to the OTTBs that aren’t actually all OTTBs.  They have been and remain available to private buyers.  They are not ONLY available to HiCaliber as they are claiming to their followers.  As I type this, they are listed with videos and individual prices on the Thompson FB page.  Some are listed as sold and some are listed as sale pending.  They are not advertised as a lot and so far, Jacob and Tara have been quite amiable to selling to private no drama buyers.  I know this because I called them. However, somewhere along the line, HiCaliber got involved and are telling people that they have been told they MUST purchase all 16 horses and now there are actually 20 horses, so all or nothing.  This is despite the fact that HiCaliber was asked to stand down on their involvement as local groups and individuals were working behind the scenes to hold Evangeline Downs, the local racetrack, accountable in enforcing their no slaughter policy and getting these horses identified.  What good is saving 16 when so many more will continue to be in trouble because people continue to get away with this stuff?  Sadly, Hicaliber decided to get involved anyhow even though they know none of the players or anything of the situation in Louisiana.  Ironically, earlier in the day HiCaliber founder, Michelle, was on live feed talking about how financially strapped they were and she has been begging for a few weeks for somebody to cosign or donate a new truck to her personally.  Apparently the BMW she managed to get from rescue dollars is not good enough for her or something or her live in girlfriend’s truck is too good to haul the new trailer she also manifested a few months ago after whining about needing one.  She often says that you have to `go for the no’, meaning keep asking for everything until people refuse, and the village idiots are so invested in their interactive soap opera with them, that they are giving up their rent money in record numbers.  I find it pretty easy to connect some dots here, but maybe that’s just me.  Whatever.

 

Hopefully you can see the screen shots I posted above here.  These are from the Hicaliber Gofundme page asking for 40k to bail these horses.  Normally, I would go through line by line and break it all down for you, but I don’t have the energy.  I’m rusty with this stuff, so cut me some slack.  I will address some of the bigger lies they have in there though.  The biggest being that they are trying to lead people to believe they all have their tattoos burned off.  No, maybe one does, but only one.  Another horse apparently has his blacked out which is just a tattoo on top of the old one.  So no, not many, not several, maybe ONE.  ONE.  Ok, then they go on to say they are were all raced and tortured.  No, not even half of them have tattoos or were raced and certainly the preggo mare about to pop wasn’t recently raced and fresh off the track.  As far as the `kill buyer’ goes, that is convicted felon Jacob Thompson currently serving something like 10 years probation for cattle theft among other things, so not exactly a stand up guy or all that familiar with the truth.  Jacob will also sell to anybody and the first person that hands him the cash.  He has restitution payments to make and he doesn’t care where the money comes from.  That’s why he demanded, and got a non-refundable $2000 deposit plus fees from HiCaliber.  Bills to pay and he found a new mark.  In doing all this HiCaliber has agreed to pay 20k for the horses and the rest is to ship them to southern California and keep them for a few months.  That’s what they say.  They never like to show actual invoices or bills so you’re just going to have to take their word for it that they need a nice round number like 20k to cover the rest of the costs.  This isn’t counting the money they already pulled in from their crying on live feed last night which was upwards of 10k.  I’m certainly not mathlete but 20 +20 + 10 = 50 to me.  Ironically, they were complaining about being in arrears to their hay supplier for 40k a few months ago and were cut off.   Things that make you go hmmm.

I’m sure some of you are sitting there thinking, `what does it matter as long as the horses are safe’?.  How safe are they?  HiCaliber wants you to believe that they are all emaciated and dying, which isn’t exactly true.  A few are in pretty rough shape, but some are in really nice shape.  But say they are all in really terrible shape.  How wise is it to cram 20 horses onto one truck and ship them in the heat straight through to Arizona, which is their designated pick up spot.  For anybody keeping track, that’s over 1000 miles they will be onboard without food or water and, allegedly one is so pregnant she’s going to pop.  Why would you want to do that to these poor souls when there are several extremely legitimate rescues closer to those horses that could and would take them if you weren’t just a huge attention whore that needed to grab a big headline like you attempted to do with the last `big save’ that wasn’t really a save at all.  More on that anon.  Much, much more.  Why would you even want to import horses off a feed lot all the way from Louisiana when your friendly neighborhood kill buyer and close friend,  Misner, has 60 horses standing on his lot that he’d happily sell you for half of that?  Why aren’t those horses right in your back yard good enough to save?  Geeze, how many local horse would 40k save?  The mind boggles.  Oh and while I’m on the subject of feedlots, the Louisiana lot these horses are coming from is said to have been ground zero for the EVH-1 outbreak over there this year.  Go watch any of the Thompson videos and you can also hear horses hacking away in the background.  Way to bring more disease into HiCaliber gals!   I’m sure your neighbors love you.  The picture below is Misner’s lot.  I guess they aren’t as media friendly as the big cross country save.  Sad times.

In closing, I’d like to say welcome back to anybody that is still following along or checks in here.  The analytics suggest I have some pretty dedicated creepers even after all this time and that Buckaroo post is still pissing people off years after the fact.  I feel like I just skimmed the surface on this stuff.  Things are still developing and there are major back stories to be told.  I hope to get to that all in good time until I get distracted again, but keep coming back.   We have some horses to save!