Bonsall Horsewoman Gets Nine Months in Jail on 20 Charges of Animal Neglect

Linda Joy Coulter, the 35-year-old Bonsall horsewoman who pleaded guilty to 20 misdemeanor counts of animal neglect, was sentenced Thursday to nine months in County Jail and ordered to sell or give up any animals still in her possession.

Coulter had faced a possible year in jail for each of the 20 counts. Her attorney, Dan Cronin, had asked that she be spared jail time. He said Coulter had done the best job she could in caring for the animals alone, while raising two children and being pregnant with a third.

Two years ago, the San Diego County Humane Society seized 79 underfed horses and other farm animals from her ranch. Some of the horses were up to 250 pounds underweight, with backbones and rib lines showing clearly. They suffered muscle deterioration, were not groomed, had overgrown hoofs and were infected with parasites. When authorities, acting on a tip, arrived at the Shadow Oaks Ranch in North County’s rural Gopher Canyon, they found one horse unable to hold its head up and another eating its bedding straw. One animal collapsed when it was put in a trailer, and another was later put to sleep.

Coulter blamed the conditions on her mother, who lived in Arkansas and whose job was to order feed for the ranch stock--which featured prized miniature show horses as well as saddle horses, goats, llamas and other farm animals.

Not Enough Feed

Coulter complained at her sentencing Thursday that her mother chronically failed to order enough feed. Coulter said she fed the animals as best she could with the feed available to her.

But Vista Municipal Court Presiding Judge Victor Ramirez said he couldn’t see any excuses for the neglect.

“This didn’t happen over a couple of days,” he said. “These animals were starved over weeks or months. To an experienced horseman, that had to be obvious.”

Answered Coulter: “It would take a lot more hay than I was getting.”

Said Ramirez: “You could have sold the horses, or called the Humane Society, or adopted them out.”

Said She Borrowed Hay

Coulter said she borrowed hay from a neighbor on occasion, but that woman told authorities she didn’t even own horses and had no hay on her property, according to court documents.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Karen Tripp noted that Coulter originally refused to allow Humane Society officers onto the ranch and denied the animals were in poor shape. Officers armed with a search warrant later entered the ranch and took many of the animals into protective custody, over the objections of Coulter.

“Miss Coulter shows no remorse at all,” Tripp said. “She is completely refusing to accept responsibility for this case. . . . She had the ability to call someone for help, but no calls were ever made.”

An accompanying report by the county Probation Department, in making its sentencing recommendation to the judge, noted that Coulter’s three children showed crystal methamphetamine in their systems at birth, but that Coulter denied that she had sold or traded the feed for illegal drugs. The Probation Department had recommended that Coulter be sentenced to a year in jail.

In her report, Probation Officer Teresa Ayala said Coulter’s mother, Dixie Blasingame, had been in the horse business for more than 25 years and reported that “she was receiving feed bills far in excess of the amount of feed the animals could possibly eat.”

‘Must Have Been Confused’

Coulter responded that her mother “must have been confused,” according to Ayala.

Coulter’s prosecution has taken nearly two years, in part because of a separate legal issue over whether the Humane Society’s seizure of the animals was legal and whether the animals could be used as evidence. Vista Municipal Judge Michael Harris at first ruled that the animals did not fall within the specific sections of the law pertaining to misdemeanor search-and-seizure warrants, but he was overruled on appeal by the district attorney’s office.

Further delaying prosecution was a switch in attorneys and Coulter’s failure to appear at an earlier sentencing hearing when she was in Arkansas visiting her mother, who was given custody of her three children after her arrest. A $100,000 bench warrant was issued for Coulter’s arrest, and extradition proceedings were begun, but Coulter returned to Vista voluntarily.

She originally faced 80 misdemeanor charges. Sixty were dropped in exchange for her guilty plea to the remaining charges.

Restitution Issue Unresolved

Still unresolved is whether Coulter will be ordered to pay up to $20,000 in restitution to the Humane Society for its expense in feeding and caring for the seized animals.

Cronin argued Thursday that, since the Humane Society received more than $20,000 in public donations specifically for the care and feeding of Coulter’s animals, it was no longer her responsibility to reimburse the organization. Furthermore, he claimed, the Humane Society seized and subsequently fed and cared for even healthy animals for which his client should not be penalized.

Ramirez said he would decide the restitution issue by next Friday.

Coulter was ordered into immediate custody, but Ramirez said she could be released on $50,000 bail if Cronin appeals the issue of the original search warrant that led to the arrest.