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Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA Investigating Reining By The Bay Incident

sg-frozen-enterprize-nrbc15SG Frozen Enterprize and Andrea Fappani at the National Reining Breeders Classic • Photo by WaltenberryAfter the discovery of three Andrea Fappani trainees being allegedly tampered with at Reining By The Bay, an unidentified woman called the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA (PHS/SPCA) to the Horse Park at Woodside in California. PHS/SPCA Vice President of Community Relations Scott Delucchi said the woman felt that the three separate incidents had some foul play tied to them, but authorities don’t know if that’s the case.

With the alleged poisoning of SG Frozen Enterprize on July 25, Delucchi said that they have not ruled out poisoning, but because there are several things that could cause a horse to have gastrointestinal issues, it doesn’t necessarily mean the stallion was poisoned. “We can’t make that jump that because the horse had diarrhea, (it means) that someone poisoned the horse,” Delucchi said. “We’re nowhere close to that (conclusion) right now. It could have been that the horse was stressed or had eaten the wrong thing…there are many factors that can cause this.”

The same is being said for the horse, believed to be Thebettertohearuwith, with a fencing nail in the sole of the hoof.

“The horse could have stepped on the nail somewhere on the property,” he said. “We don’t have anything that tells us that someone came onto the property and drove the nail into the horse’s foot. We can’t say that that didn’t happen, but we have absolutely no proof that it did happen.”

Delucchi added, “If the vet had said that he’d never, in his career, seen a horse step on a nail like that, that’d be one thing, but that’s not we were told. It would be a little unusual, but we weren’t given that information.”

He also said it’s bad to think that someone could lift up a horse’s hoof and drive the nail into his hoof like it had been found.

“I don’t know that many people who could do that,” he said. “That’s one thing that struck us as unusual – that someone would be able to do that to a horse without being injured. Maybe the person was injured, but that scenario seems less likely than a horse stepping on a nail.”

Delucchi pointed out that the PHS/SPCA investigator specifically asked the property owner if there were any videos of the incidents, and they were informed that there were not any videos of the barns. Without any video evidence, Delucchi said it’s difficult for the investigation to conclude if any foul play had been involved.