For horse owner, first help, then criminal charges

Monica Ogle knew her horses were hungry all winter.

Ogle had a dozen horses under her care at her Neals School Road farm near Seaford, where she operated a horse rescue on the thinnest of budgets. Livestock rescue groups take in sick or unwanted horses and try to find owners willing to adopt them. Ogle, 60, had not taken in new horses for more than a year; she had a hard time adopting any out to willing owners; and hay was scarce.

"You'd go to this hay dealer, run him out of hay, go to the next one," spending $200 to $600 a month on hay, Ogle said in interviews. "Through the winter, some horses lost some weight." She leaned on backup feed: alfalfa cubes, hay stretcher pellets. Come spring, hay was easier to get, but her older horses showed lasting effects from the lean, cold months.

So when a Delaware SPCA investigator came to probe a cruelty complaint sparked by the horses' gaunt appearance, Ogle wasn't all that surprised. The investigator, Brett Conley, noted in a Sept. 2 report he saw horses "extremely thin and underweight," with one requiring "immediate nutrition."

But how the Delaware SPCA dealt with what it found on Neals School Road has led Conley, the investigator, to leave his job under protest. And Ogle, who was initially grateful when the SPCA supplied her with grain and hay to help her rescue operation get back on its feet, feels betrayed that another animal welfare group, First State Animal Control and SPCA, took over her case on Sept. 30 – and then pressed 11 animal cruelty charges against her, including one count of felony animal abuse.

"I just needed to get these horses something that had more fat content, and that's what I did," Ogle said of her actions after Conley's Sept. 2 visit. "I was buying that feed and doing what Brett told me to do, feeding three times a day. And horses were picking up their weight."

Conley, for his part, calls the about-face – one animal welfare group giving aid to Ogle, then another charging her with hurting animals – unjust and unfair.

"Some people deserve to be locked up, and I've done that," Conley said. "But it felt really good to help someone ... She was deceived. We spent money, as the Delaware SPCA, to help her and then abandoned her."

First State Animal Control Director Kevin Usilton, though, said the cruelty charges only came after Ogle declined additional help from his agency. He said conditions on the farm were still dire more than a month after Delaware SPCA's first contact.

"Animals suffered, pretty horrifically in my opinion, because this rescue didn't ask for assistance," Usilton said Wednesday. "We rely on our veterinarians. If they see abuse and our officers see abuse, we're going to step up."

Patchwork of enforcement

The Delaware SPCA, under state code, has the power to "enforce all laws enacted for the protection of animals," in keeping with what's become normal in Delaware: the General Assembly sets laws governing the treatment of animals but relies on nonprofit groups, not government agencies, to enforce them. It's the same model of governance that puts most dog control responsibilities in the hands of Kent County-based First State Animal Control and SPCA through negotiated contracts with county and city governments.

Andrea Perlak, the executive director of the Delaware SPCA, said her organization made a firm choice this year to delegate its animal cruelty responsibilities to First State Animal Control (which, until recently, operated under a different name, Kent County SPCA). The status quo had been for Delaware SPCA to handle most Sussex County and New Castle County cruelty reports – of beaten dogs, underfed livestock, or abused cats – since it has offices in Georgetown and Stanton.

That decision, Perlak said, was made with the consent of the Office of Animal Welfare, a relatively new state agency charged with overseeing a patchwork of animal-focused groups and setting standards of care.

"We didn't have the infrastructure in place. Cruelty enforcement needed a more robust mechanism. Kent County SPCA had the infrastructure in place," Perlak said. "We have said that First State should do all enforcement for cruelty. It's a bit of a mission shift, but it's supported by everyone in the community."

The Neals School Road cruelty report, Perlak said, came in just as the two organizations were finishing details of how First State would handle all livestock cruelty cases, even when calls initially came to Delaware SPCA.

"It looked like you had some very thin horses," Perlak said of the initial investigation. "We tried to do the right thing by buying them some hay." But, she said, she could not comment on the case beyond that.

Records of Conley's investigation show he advised superiors that there was enough evidence of neglect on Ogle's part to pursue cruelty charges. "A seizure of the horses and an arrest of the homeowner and her boyfriend was warranted and justifiable," he wrote. But the report also shows staff considered, from the start, treating the case as a chance to offer aid to Ogle's group – "provid[ing] some financial assistance to the owners instead of prosecuting them," the report notes.

Conley's records, which he provided to The News Journal, say Perlak told shelter manager Bonnie Madonna that Delaware SPCA would take the aid route in Ogle's case. On Sept. 5, the records show, Conley and Lisa Boyce – a horse farm owner who has helped the SPCA with equine rescues in the past – returned to Neals School Road and delivered $400 in grain. They also paid for delivery of $400 in hay, which amounted to 80 bales.

"I issued Monica a correction order and advised her to use the grain and hay for the rehabilitation of the neglect rescue horses," Conley wrote in his log.

Ogle says she did that and more, attending a seminar on equine nutrition that the Delaware SPCA advised her to take. She saw her thinnest, oldest horses – one was 37, and two others were 27 – gaining weight after Conley's intervention, she said.

A second delivery of hay and grain "would have been helpful, but I wasn't going to ask for it. I was getting it and buying it," Ogle said. "I did want help in trying to place some horses [with new owners]. Some were rideable; that's what I did with the younger ones. I have adopted a mess of horses."

Change of plans

On Oct. 15, though, Ogle said she was surprised by the arrival of four First State animal-control officers on her farm, two weeks after First State took over her case. "They came on this property with horse trailers, state troopers and a search warrant. I mean, they bombarded me," Ogle said.

Usilton confirmed in an interview that First State Animal Control recently started to handle cruelty complaints once addressed by Delaware SPCA. First State officers on the Sept. 30 visit, he said, documented four horses that were seriously emaciated and two others deemed very thin on a commonly-used scale of horse health.

"The officers noticed right away animals in dire need of groceries, and there were groceries sitting in the barn unused," Usilton said. They told Ogle to have a vet examine the horses within a week and urged her to feed them more.

By Oct. 15, Usilton said, Ogle had taken some required steps to avoid cruelty charges, including having a vet see the horses and having their hooves trimmed, but not all. First State's vets took the view that "there's no way this person can sustain 11 horses in this condition," he said.

"The stalls were 4 feet high in some cases with feces, and the horses were locked in there," Usilton said. "These animals were suffering, and we needed to halt their suffering immediately." All 11 horses were removed from the property, he said, and two have since been euthanized. [Conley, the investigator who saw the horses in early September, disagreed with the evaluation that some of the horses were so far gone that euthanasia was called for. "Neither appeared to be in grave danger or [near] death when I was there," he said.]

Ogle was charged with one count of felony animal abuse and 10 counts of misdemeanor abuse. The charges and the euthanasia were both shocking, she said, and not at all what she expected after getting the Delaware SPCA's help at first. "I wanted to be the one with Doby" – the oldest of the horses, and one of the two put down – "when he left," she said.

Tim Willard, the attorney defending Ogle against the cruelty charges, said he thought she was "unfairly treated" by First State. "What strikes me as somewhat odd in this case is she was working with authorities to get the diets back in order," Willard said. "The charges seemed to come out of the blue."

Conley, a former New Castle County police officer, said he also felt betrayed by the Delaware SPCA's shift in mission away from cruelty enforcement. After the case was transferred, he said, he was asked by superiors to sign a confidentiality agreement. When he refused – "it was censorship," he said – he expected to be drummed out of his job in a constructive discharge. He resigned in early October. Perlak declined to discuss Conley's employment history.

"There are good people at the SPCA," Conley said. But under Perlak's oversight, he contended, "it is not about cruelty. It is not about animals." The First State searches on Ogle's farm, he asserted, were "a publicity stunt to get donations and show off."

Perlak said the change of roles for both agencies will lead to better service for complainants who report cruelty and will let Delaware SPCA focus more resources on its role as a shelter and rescue organization.

"It was in no-man's land. We said we were doing it, but we weren't, really," Perlak said. "It's a positive step for the people of Delaware... It's the best thing for the animals. A lot of people criticize First State, but they have a really tightly run organization."

Both Perlak and Usilton said the statewide cost of addressing cruelty complaints is about $600,000. With the change in duties, Perlak said, the Office of Animal Welfare will likely devote all of a $100,000 grant for cruelty investigations to First State.

Usilton acknowledged that Ogle's different treatment by the two agencies could be "confusing." But he said the evidence First State gathered in its probe of her farm, including the professional opinions of veterinarians, fully justified filing charges.

"Why we stepped up and did this was based on the testimony and evidence gathering that we did when we were on the property," Usilton said. "It had nothing to do with PR."

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.