Large-Animal Disposal Service Offers Options

Roberta Warne softly stroked the bony old horse lying in the dust, inhaling its last breaths.

“It’s OK, buddy,” she said, patting him lightly. “You’re going to a better place than this.”

And with those last few words of comfort, she watched the ailing horse die.

It was a typical day of work for Warne, 44, who operates Dignified Dead Animal Disposal, the only large-animal disposal service in Ventura County.

Mostly she handles horses, but Warne has also picked up dead cows, llamas, goats, lions and a zebra for burial or some other type of disposal.

She uses a big truck equipped with a winch and a specially designed bed that tilts, so that the 5-foot, 4-inch, 115-pound Warne can hoist the animals--which weigh well over 1,000 pounds--into the pickup. She usually takes them to Oxnard for burial in a designated area next to the Bailard Landfill.

Her business began 13 years ago, after she had to “put down” her husband’s best horse, Clifford. At that time, the only option she had was to take the horse to a rendering plant.

“I didn’t want our best horse to be sold for body parts,” said Warne, who lives on a small ranch outside Moorpark. “I know how it is for people who lose a horse. They want options.”

But it wasn’t just about having options, people want to know that their animals are being treated with respect, she said. And the owners sometimes need a little sympathy. After she has picked up an animal, she sends the owner a card with a short poem of condolence.

Back when her beloved Clifford died, animals were sometimes picked up by trash companies. She thought she could provide a more comforting service.

“When you go out there, you have to remember that it’s like you’re going to be handling a member of the family,” she said. “You have to do it with dignity.”

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Most of the animals she picks up are horses that have grown old or sick, and are in enough discomfort that their owners decide the animal needs to be put out of its misery.

Sometimes the family will be there to talk with their horse before it dies, sometimes they decide it isn’t something they want to see.

“It’s painless for the horse but it’s not a pretty sight,” she said. “We try to work quickly and cleanly.”

Warne usually arrives with a veterinarian--in one case this week it was George Dyck, a veterinarian from the San Fernando Valley.

Dyck injects the horse with pentobarbital, a powerful anesthesia, and within seconds the animal falls to the ground.

“Usually they’re gone before they hit,” he said, while holding a large syringe filled with the blue liquid. “But sometimes, for the older ones or those with bad circulation, they might take a few more breaths before they go.”

The drug puts the animal to sleep, numbing its body, and then stopping its heart.

“If I had a choice, this is the way that I would want to go,” Warne said. “Horses depend on you to give them water when they’re thirsty, feed them when they’re hungry, and cure them when they’re sick. I think they expect this too.”

For $150 she will take the animal for burial at the landfill. The owners sometimes ask that the horse be buried with its favorite blanket, or halter. One owner asked that she throw in a few beer cans, saying the horse always liked to play with the empty cans.

“I respect their wishes,” she said. “Whatever they want to do.”

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For $1,000 more she can have the animal cremated, and for $3,000 the owners can have it buried at a pet cemetery in Calabasas. If the owners don’t really care what happens to the animal, Warne will take it to a rendering plant in Los Angeles, which uses the hide for leather and the rest of the animal for such things as fertilizer, chicken feed and glue.

“Before Roberta started her business there were only a couple of options and none of them were very appealing,” said Kathy Jenks, director of Ventura County’s animal regulation department.

Many years ago when Jungleland--the company that kept animals used in Hollywood films--was operating in Thousand Oaks, the operators would allow people to bring their horses there to be shot, Jenks said.

“They fed [the horse remains] to their big cats as a treat,” she said. “Now they have Roberta. She shows up without a hair out of place, looking like Tammy Wynette or someone just getting off a country and Western stage.

“She hasn’t become calloused, and she is sympathetic to the people,” Jenks said. “I mean the name of her business says it all, she shows some dignity to these creatures that have been longtime companions.”

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Warne sometimes picks up dead animals for county animal control. Those jobs can be difficult, Jenks said. The animals may have been dead several days, bloated and partially decomposed. Warne has been called in to pick up animals killed in wildfires, or dispose of carcasses of sea lions or dolphins that have washed onto beaches.

“I’ve learned how to not breathe out of my nose,” she said.

Sometimes she has had to use circling vultures to find a dead animal in a field. And she has had the distasteful experience of having an animal--long dead and bloated with gas--explode when she tried to haul it away.

She has been called to pick up horses that have been ridden so hard that they died from heat exhaustion, and others that she says have been “killed by kindness.”

“Those are hard but you just do the job,” she said. “Every situation is different. I’ve met some of the neatest people in the world. Horse people tend to be good people . . . and those are the people who I deal with mostly. I’m glad to help them.”