1 horse returned to riding teacher

College of Charleston riding instructor Rebecca Housley said six horses seized from her property on Johns Island received proper care, even though Charleston County placed them in foster homes and initially charged her with ill-treatment of animals.

The county recently returned one of the horses, a stallion Housley raised from a foal. The animals were taken from the farm when sheriff's deputies and a veterinarian inspected their health and living conditions.

Housley said the horses had plenty of food and water, and that she rescued five of them who suffered with injury or illness. "There are reasons these horses were not being used," she said.

She said Tuesday that the five horses placed in foster care were de-wormed every six weeks. "Those horses ate twice a day, every day. They were on lush green pasture. They were being rehabilitated," she said.

Housley said that the 24 horses now at Kennerleigh Farm have plenty of hay, feed, water and pasture. The horses drink from a spring-fed pond, she said.

She welcomed unannounced inspections of the horses for the next year, which is a term of the consent order agreement her attorney, Capers Barr, reached with the county that resolves the case against her.

"I'm glad this is over, and I'm ready to move forward with my life," she said.

Also, Housley will pay about $7,000 reimbursement for the care of the animals taken from the farm and complete a pre-trial intervention program, sheriff's Maj. John Clark said.

"She's been punished and at the same time it allows us to monitor her," Clark said.

"We realized that at some point she would probably be able to care for one or two horses, but not all. She agreed that we should keep the five (horses), but she wanted the stallion," he said.

Housley has a monetary stake in the stallion and the county did not want to hurt her financially. "This was a win-win situation, not only for her but the real victims here, the horses," Clark said.

During a horse welfare check Aug. 20 at Kennerleigh Farm, veterinarian Justin Miller of Shambley Equine Clinic in Summerville said he saw a lack of water, poor nutrition and overt signs of intestinal parasites on six horses of concern. He said he could see the outlines of the horses' ribs and spines.

Housley, 37, teaches horseback riding as a physical education elective at the college. She is a certified riding instructor who is in the second year of a five-year, $513,000 contract with the college to offer the horsemanship instruction at the farm, said Mike Robertson, the college senior director of media relations.

Eighty-eight students paid $360 each to take a riding course at the farm this fall. The college will continue to honor its contract with Housley, Robertson said.

Barr noted that there were 23 horses at the farm that the sheriff's office didn't seize. About eight horses are boarded there and none of the owners removed them, he said.

"At the very least, this was simply an aberration and did not reflect ill-treatment," Barr said.

The investigation began when the Sheriff's Office received a call from the Livestock and Equine Awareness and Rescue Network in Meggett suggesting that some horses at the farm were being neglected.

LEARN Director Elizabeth Steed said two of the seized horses have been placed in foster care on Wadmalaw Island, and three of them remain at LEARN. She said the stallion was dehydrated when it came to LEARN.

Reach Prentiss Findlay at 937-5711.