Responded Jaime Taft after I read her the working conditions for an Animal Control Officer.

Yet her work as a rescuer at a seizure in Carnation was very much the same.




The Seizure

Jaime went with King County Animal Control officers and Dr. Hannah Evergreen on Saturday, February 23, 2008 for a seizure of horses from a property just off the Carnation-Fall City Road. Jaime is one of the leading lights of SAFE (Save A Forgotten Equine), and she had offered homes for six the horses that were to be seized. The others would go to Equine Aid, another Monroe rescue.

First Glimpses

Jaime anticipated it would be pretty bad. She had heard there were dead horses on the property. There were no horses were immediately visible from the road. Only when they turned up the gravel driveway did she see a mare and foal (Willow and Lily). They were blanketed and didn’t at first glance look too shocking. That first impression was deceiving, though. Underneath the blankets they were emaciated, riddled with worms and their coats full of lice, their skin scabbed with rain rot.

There was no time for handwringing, though. They were there to remove the animals. The first ones they planned to take were two colts, who Jaime describes it, “where in a pen full of blackberry bushes, all kinds of junk and boards with nails." They were covered with scratches, including one on the eyeball of the palomino colt, Kokomo.

Jaime took things in stride, at first. "I was thinking, Okay where are the rest of them? I knew there were ten horses. At first glance, I didn’t think the colts looked so horrible, actually, because of their thick winter coats – but I could see the rainrot and the cuts that were on them from the blackberry bushes.

“Little Kokomo was pretty wild – he was jumping over and through the blackberries and getting more scratches.

"He was finally jumped and wrestled to the ground by the animal control officers, which was very traumatic for him, for everybody."


A Gruesome Sight

"After we had caught the colts and we were getting ready to go back with our first load, I saw the dead horse near the house.

"Some kind of sick side of me forced me to walk over and take a closer look.

"His neck was all eaten. The coyotes had been at him. His body was intact, but his ears were gone….

"I just started to cry – I had to walk away, I was feeling nauseous.

"I thought, This is awful, I don’t know if I can deal with this."


But deal with it she did.

“It actually gets you more focused. I was thinking, I have to get these horses out of here…”

Easier said than done. Humans can overpower a yearling, but not a full size adult horse.

"We had another chestnut mare – she did not want to get on the trailer. We tried everything. She was throwing herself to the ground – they ended up creating a box around her and then backing the truck up to her so she had to get in."

This is definitely not how you want to teach a horse to load. Duress was the last resort, driven by the urgency they all felt.

"We could not leave them there … no matter how many hours it took."


The Facts of the Case

Eventually, five horses, including Willow, her filly Lily, the two colts, Kokomo and Sinatra ,and a pinto mare, Hope, were transported to Jaime's Monroe property. The sixth, a tiny colt they optimistically named Phoenix, hoping he would rise from the ashes, went to Pilchuck Veterinary Clinic for a few days until he was released to Jaime. The horses are all Saddlebreds. Jean Marie Elledge, their owner, claimed she had been in the breeding and boarding business for twelve years. She told police that she had trouble with some unreliable people she hired to care for the horses recently, according to the Seattle P.I. She also claimed to be experiencing financial difficulties. However, the horses were not only starving, they were lacking water as well.

There were four dead horses on the property in total - one locked in a stall, the one on the front lawn, twenty feet from the house that Jaime saw up close, and two in the pasture where the live horses were grazing, one covered by a tarp and one partially buried. Necropsies by Dr. Evergreen confirmed that three had died of starvation. The fourth body was too decomposed for the necropsy to be conclusive.

Jean Marie Ellege was released from jail on bail and showed up at the property in the midst of the seizure with a small quantity of hay. Too little, too late.

Five horses that were boarded there were left in the possession of their owner, who rented a home on the property. They were in relatively good shape.

Jaime has seen vile conditions and plenty of horses in distress, but not a disaster of quite this magnitude. It left some indelible marks.

"The first couple nights I had trouble sleeping, I felt sick to my stomach…"


The Aftermath

The truth is, the seized horses require so much care that she has little time for brooding. Fortunately Jaime is able to provide the 14-16 hours of care the horses need, with the help of a few volunteers. Because of their disastrous condition, the seized horses take a lot more care than a healthy horse. Jaime gave the following rundown of what is actually involved.


"Well, my day starts around 7 am to get the first feeding of the day [they are being fed 4 times and getting a little turnout on grass as well – starved horses need to be carefully renourished as they usually carry a large parasite load and have poor gut flora. They can easily colic at this point].

"3 horses have to have Ranitidine [an antacid prescribed for humans under the brand name Zantac and give to horses as an ulcer treatment] – 3 colts get it 3 times a day via syringe, Lily gets antibiotics. First she has to be caught – it was a battle until I figured out a trick – I give the mom hay in the shed. Lily follows her and then then I lock her in.

"Little Kokomo has to get eye ointment 3 times a day [for the untreated eye scratch caused by the blackberry bushes in his pen]." The mare Hope is also receiving three syringes of a medication similar to Miracle Clay twice a day to help resolve her diarrhea.

"Then they each get small amounts of hay – orchard grass – 1/4 to 1/2 flake each per feeding.

"They get fed again 4 hours later and the colts get their second dose of Rantidine. Then I pick stalls and do water, and the eye ointment again.

"Hope is in a stall because she is a slow eater, so I let her out after lunch. And then each of the babies get half an hour of grass time as well. Then I pick all the manure out of the front pasture because of worms [there are visible worms in the horse's manure because they are so overloaded with parasites].

"And the lice, the lice. Yesterday they got their lice treatment [a dusting with medicated powder] - I pulled the blanket off Hope yesterday – she was so itchy she was rubbing on everything. There were hundreds of them. Lice are usually tiny but these ones were bigger than fleas and you could see them wiggling around.

"Then of course we have been doing treatments on their rainrot, picking scabs, and medicating them and they’ll need more lice treatments – I think three more times is the protocol there.

"In another 4-5 days we’ll able to start worming – half a dose each." With such a heavy worm load you can create an impaction colic just from dead worms.

Jaime cautions that Phoenix is not out the woods yet. “It’s still touch and go – the reason he was pulled out is that he was anemic and his body temperature was 97 when he went to Pilchuck – he still hasn’t bounced back. He lays down long for long periods. He has alert moments around feeding time, but he’s very depressed and lethargic and very weak – he has trouble getting up.“

"Then around 4:30 there is another feeding. And again at 8:30 or 9:00 o’clock, and another round of medications – and if I have taken blankets off, I put them back on.”

The blankets are important because the horses don’t have anywhere near normal body fat to help regulate their core temperature, and need convert every calorie they can. Little Phoenix has to wear doubles.

So what about those few spare hours between activities?

"I guess I forgot the part where my phone rings all day long with calls from the media and the emails – we are getting flooded with emails – I forward a lot of them to Bonnie.“ (Another SAFE administrator).

Jaime is not complaining. She’s just trying to explain why she hasn’t responded personally to everyone. She does have a volunteer helping her with the horses at her property.


So What Can We Do?

The King County Prosecutor will pursue the case against Jean Marie Elledge. However, her horses are now dependent on the kindness of strangers. All those offers to volunteer and for foster homes are terrific. Don’t feel they are not appreciated even if you don’t get an immediate response from SAFE. It will be a while before the horses can be moved anywhere.

Frankly, the best thing you can do right now, though is to make a donation to SAFE, either in cash or of some of the items they are still looking for.

SAFE is also trying to extend their hand to the horses involved the Snohomish County case, which were confiscated at another property owned by Jean Elledge in Monroe. It is even possible there is even a third location involved.

The 58-year old woman has been arrested twice, one in each county, though she is currently out on bail. Ten counts of Animal Cruelty have already been filed in King County (with a maximum sentence of one year) and will follow in Snohomish.

It seems that a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork with stories of their encounters – including some who boarded their horses with her at the Snohomish County property and then reclaimed them due to inadequate care. They did make complaint calls and reports going several months back. Jaime suggests that if you have any information, contact the Snohomish Animal Control Hotline or file a report via their website. The media is also following this story closely.

King County had no prior file on Elledge, according to director Al Dams, but went officers went to check the property the Thursday before the seizure after hearing from Snohomish. Because of the way the property is situated, the horses were not easily visible to outsiders. The second visit to the property was made by Animal Control officers and Dr. Hannah Evergreen, who works regularly with several local rescues, including SAFE.

Dr. Evergreen is visiting daily to check on the horses. At this time it is still touch and go, particularly for Phoenix.

The horses seized in Monroe by Snohomish County Animal Control were initially held at the Enumclaw auction house, but are apparently now in the care of two veterinarians.