EDITOR'S NOTE: Some may find images attached to this story disturbing
When Kelly Fremlin went out to walk the herd on Monday, she saw a single horse leg sticking up far off in the middle of her 100-acre field.
“That’s never a good sign,” said the veteran horse breeder who runs Sunset Family Ranch in Echo Bay.
Walking out onto the grass field she discovered one of her brown, black, and white Bay Paint horses — ‘Splash’ — lying dead in the field with a bloody hole in its rear end.
The horse was 8-9 years old — “in the prime of its life” — and because it comes from champion stock is valued by Fremlin around $5,000.
Fremlin said she discovered the horse around 10 a.m. and the last time she had checked on her horses, around 3 p.m. the previous day, they were all as healthy as could be.
She guesses that the horse had been lying dead in the field around four or five hours.
“You know how I know? Because the vultures would be there in four or five hours (but) they had just started circling an hour after I found the horse,” she said. “Around here, that’s how you know. If you come out and you see a vulture circling around somewhere you immediately start looking because something is dead.”
Fremlin doesn’t often see her horses lying dead in the field. The last time it happened a bear had mauled one in the night.
Because of the size of the hole and its location, Fremlin thought someone had shot her horse — why else would there be a hole in the horse like that she asked?
The position of the hole, she noted, sort of looked like someone had shot it in the butt when it was upright.
The OPP were called out but, not being animal experts, a veterinarian had to be called to determine the cause of death so that they could proceed in an investigation if necessary.
Dr. Kieth Good of the Algoma Veterinary Clinic performed the autopsy.
Good said he performs autopsies on suspicious animals about once a month, most often on “food producing animals, like cattle” he said.
Good said he examined the body and discovered the hole just below the vulva, tearing in the diaphragm, intestines pushed into the chest cavity, and what appeared to be blunt force-type trauma on the lower abdominal muscles but no other marks on the outside.
No bullet was ever discovered, nor any obvious exit wound.
“I would expect if it went through the abdomen there should have been intestinal perforation somewhere and leakage of intestinal contents and there was nothing like that,” said Good. “I’m 99 per cent confident it was not any kind of a bullet, arrow, or any kind of ballistic . . . I’m still puzzled and a bit baffled to what caused it but I’m pretty convinced it was accidental as opposed to intentional or malicious.”
Good told the OPP what he found and with that information the investigation was called off — “no foul play is suspected” said Const. Monique Baker.
Still, Fremlin isn’t entirely convinced.
Good suggested the possibility, because of the internal bruising, the horse may have landed on a piece of equipment or been kicked by another horse.
If the horse kicked the other horse there wouldn't be a hole said Fremlin, and in the wide open field there is no equipment anywhere near the horse, nor any sharp branches around.
Fremlin said there has been plenty of mischief in her area in recent years.
She said her fence and gates have been cut open by mischief makers and the nearby church had its windows punched out.
Ten years ago, still unknown parties cut her fence and one of her horses ran onto the highway and hit a vehicle, she said.
And then there’s the autopsy — Fremlin’s not entirely confident in it.
To her it still really looks like the horse was shot but, "even if it wasn’t a bullet wound, what happened?"
Both Fremlin and Good agreed, it remains a mystery.