Grrr...Get Your Facts Straight!

Shoddy reporting at its best. Why am I not surprised this is on Fox News?




Let's talk about what's wrong with this.

The Allenspark Livery and the Wild Basin Livery are two totally different entities, owned and operated by two totally different entities. The original broadcast of this piece tied the two liveries together. At least at the end of this clip the reporter is clear to say that the livery he was reporting from was not the one where the horse was injured. My question - why wasn't he at Wild Basin?

Am I the only one who thinks that the horse's wound looks a lot older than two weeks old, especially for a supposed high-powered rifle? It's healed up miraculously well for only being two weeks old.

The manager of the Allenspark Livery, who broke up during her interview, has done an amazing job with the livery in the short time she's been there. She's hauled away almost twenty dump trucks worth of filth that was in the pen; she's re-painted the pen and fixed broken feeders that had been neglected over the past few years. The horses are calm and well-mannered, as you can see from the clip.

This wonderful woman, the savior of the Allenspark Livery, was accused by the owner of the injured horse of shooting his horse. Three guesses who the old manager of the Allenspark Livery is. At least the news didn't clamp on to that little bit of trivia. The police obviously did not take the accusation seriously and have cleared her as a possible suspect.

Here's a little background about her accuser - I wasn't going to do this, but he's pushed one time too many - every time his horses get loose, he accuses some disgruntled employee or former employee of sneaking over in the middle of the night and letting his horses out.  This happened at least once a summer for every year he was at Allenspark.  More than once Bill and Juanita have been the ones to hear the horses and go to the livery to wake the old manager and help re-capture the loose herd.

During the new Barn Boss' first week at Allenspark, she was called to Wild Basin by a neighbor to put Wild Basin's loose horses back in the pen.  The horses were loose on the highway and she was the one who dropped everything to make sure the horses were safely put back in the pen.  Horses she's not responsible for.  Yet the thought of horses in danger spurred her to action.  I can guaran-damn-tee you that her accuser (who by the way is in charge of the horses that got loose) would not have done such a thing.

I started this post angry that the news got their facts wrong, but I realized that I'm angry at the old manager for creating such a big deal about his horse getting shot.  My gut feeling is that it was a ricochet that hit the horse and was nothing intentional.  My biggest beef with the old manager is that he sees conspiracies where there aren't any as his history indicates.

Either way, I'm sad that the horse was injured.  It doesn't matter that if it was an accident or intentional; the horse is the one who's suffering right now.  I hope the mare's well cared for and enjoys her summer off as she heals.