Two weeks after the state confiscated 39 horses from a horse farm in Townshend, all the horses are stable, but some have a longer “road to recovery” than others, according to Jen Straub, executive director of Dorset Equine Rescue.
The two horses with critical condition when seized from Friseians of Majesty are still in a veterinary hospital as of Wednesday — a gelding with severe dental issues due to lack of routine dental care and a mare with an acute hoof abscess, Straub said.
The majority of horses are healing from some combination of lice, mites, roundworm infection and a skin fungus called rain rot.
“That’s all just due to neglect, not getting proper grooming and bathing, not getting regular care,” Straub said.
After the fourth and largest seizure of horses from the Friesians of Majesty horse farm in two years, Windham County State’s Attorney Steven Brown said the ongoing animal cruelty investigation is a “fairly unique case.”
The horse farm’s owner, Robert Labrie, pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of animal cruelty and violations of conditions of release on June 18.
The state is exploring options including a permanent or temporary order barring Labrie from possessing horses, Brown said. The state attempted to request that Labrie turn over the horses still on his property to a third party as a condition of his release at an arraignment hearing, but that motion was denied by the judge due to lack of authority to issue the order, he said.
The first seizure in July 2023 has been adjudicated, and those 13 horses have been forfeited to be rehomed, Brown said. The second forfeiture request by the state, after 20 horses were seized in September 2024, is also still pending. The state also seized two horses from the farm in June of 2024. In the second forfeiture case, the state filed 16 misdemeanor animal cruelty charges under Vermont’s animal cruelty statute related to the condition of the 20 horses.
The state will file another forfeiture order for the most recent seizure to begin the process of finding permanent homes for the 39 horses, according to Brown. He expressed gratitude for the rescue agencies that have assisted the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and taken in horses.
Since the most recent seizure, 25 of the 39 horses have been relocated from their first stop at Dorset Equine Rescue to the Gentle Giants horse farm in Maryland. They are “visibly looking better in even just a week,” said Lorin Grey, the director of growth at Gentle Giants.
“They’re starting to gain weight,” Grey said. “They’re out on pasture and have access to hay, feed, grain, so they are all doing well and settling in, and we’re starting to address any specific medical issues.”
Grey said the organization was contacted by Vermont’s animal welfare partners for help because some stallions needed “specialized housing and individualized turnout,” a practice of allowing horses to graze in a pasture or paddock.
Gentle Giants horse farm is “one of the only rescues on the Eastern Seaboard that are equipped to house a large number of stallions and a large number of horses in general,” she said.
The Maryland horse farm also took in seven stallions after the seizure from Friesians of Majesty in September 2024. Those horses have all now recovered, but Grey said they were “several hundred pounds underweight” and many had “ongoing, longtime skin issues that hadn’t been addressed.”
The Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals took in six horses on June 20 after they were originally transferred to Dorset Equine Rescue. Peg Keyser, the society’s advancement director, said the horses’ body condition scores were between 1 and 2 — the low end of the scale. Keyser said the horses’ feet and teeth were neglected and their skin was riddled with ticks and parasites, and in at least one case “raging dermatitis.”
The horses have already seen improvement since arriving and are going through veterinary evaluations and refeeding processes tailored to the horses’ individual challenges, Keyser said. But, the neglect and malnourishment the horses experienced for an unknown amount of time has caused compounded stress and chronic health conditions that will likely have lasting effects, she said.
A more efficient and effective system
Rep. Chea Waters Evans, D-Charlotte, said the previous seizures at the Townshend horse farm, along with the death of goats within her district in 2023, drew attention to the shortcomings of the state’s animal welfare system.
Those two cases prompted Waters Evans to cosponsor H.626, which was signed into law in June 2024. The law created a Division of Animal Welfare, a new governmental arm tasked with creating a more efficient and effective animal welfare system, she said.
“There are a lot of people who were trying to solve similar problems in a parallel fashion, instead of collaborating together,” Waters Evans said. “Hopefully if we have a more streamlined system, we’ll be able to stop some of these problems before they start.”
Lisa Milot, the state’s newly appointed division director, said she does not have a formal role in the active animal cruelty investigation, but is tasked with creating a comprehensive plan to improve the state’s animal welfare system in the coming months.
Milot said Vermont has lacked uniformity and a clear process for law enforcement entities in different parts of the state. There is a need to strengthen and simplify the process of reporting, investigating and seeking recourse through the courts in animal cruelty cases, she said.
“There’s no real consistency in how the cases are handled,” Milot said. “There’s some large cases that have come up in recent years, and (the state) wants both a better approach to investigating and prosecuting them, but also to, long term, preventing these sorts of cases.”
Milot said animal owners accused of animal cruelty are still allowed to own and breed animals while cases are pending because of the presumption of innocence unless proven guilty.
Along with a general backlog of cases in the Vermont courts since the Covid-19 pandemic, Milot said animal cruelty cases can take years to complete because crimes against humans are prioritized over property related crimes.
Horses and other animals are considered by the state to be “special property,” so animal cruelty cases are litigated before crimes related to inanimate objects. Milot said the “biggest thing that would help with rescues, with the state expense on these cases is speeding up the rate at which the animal can be rehomed.”
Milot said there is no state-run impound center to house animals during animal cruelty cases in Vermont, and that would be very expensive to create. Partner rescue groups must foot the bill to house, feed, care and treat medical conditions of seized horses before they are forfeited and can be adopted, she said.
Milot said she has been reviewing the animal welfare laws in other states, such as legislation to expedite animal cruelty cases and reduce some of the cost burden on rescue agencies. Her goal is to “come up with a plan and procedures that can help alleviate those sorts of strains, but without causing extra strains on taxpayers,” she said.
Straub, of Dorset Rescue, said there has been productive collaboration between her rescue and the state investigators at the Fish & Wildlife Department and law enforcement. But, she said would like to see more attention and investment in the state’s animal welfare system overall.
“There’s a lack of resources for implementing the laws. There needs to be more people that have time to go do welfare checks and follow through on these neglect cases,” Straub said. “There are a lot of animals suffering across the state, and it’s not being dealt with as timely as it should be.”
The Fish & Wildlife Department, the Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets and the Vermont State Police all declined to comment due to the ongoing animal cruelty investigation.
Labrie’s attorney also said she could not comment while the case is active, and Labrie did not respond to requests for comment.
