Questions raised about youth program.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 4/14/2005): A story on Page D2 on Wednesday about a Bellfountain couple's concerns about the condition of a horse they donated to the RIDER Summit program should have specified that the problems they observed occurred before the horse was placed with a 12-year-old Eugene girl.

BELLFOUNTAIN - Two years ago, Cindy and Gary Hallett donated a 2-year-old registered quarter horse to a nonprofit program organized in Western Oregon to help needy youths stay in school and avoid drugs and teen pregnancy by teaching them to care for a horse.

Now, the Halletts have that horse, Ginger, back - along with her 3-week-old foal.

The couple said they were stunned to receive a letter from the American Quarter Horse Association in February, asking for a DNA sample from Ginger so that her expected foal could be registered.

The couple said the RIDER (Realizing Individual Dreams Equestrian Ranch) Summit program, which had promised to assign Ginger to a teenager, had used her for another purpose - breeding.

Meanwhile, a Corvallis woman who donated four horses to the program said she was shocked to recognize one of them on the block at a Eugene horse auction on Sunday. Marilyn Schill of Corvallis said she filed a complaint with the Lane County sheriff's office, saying she never had formally transferred ownership of the Arabian pinto to RIDER Summit and that someone had forged her signature on the mare's papers in order to sell the mare.

"I told them I wanted to retain legal ownership until she was awarded to a kid in the program, and then I would sign the papers over to that person," Schill said. (Under the nonprofit program's rules, participants must be 13 or older and take ownership of a horse only after turning 16 and spending three years learning to care for a horse.)

Rhett Davis, who founded RIDER Summit five years ago in the small Coos County town of Powers, blamed former board member Joni Van Orden for breeding the Halletts' horse.

Schill said that when she donated her horses, she dealt with Van Orden.

Davis said the volunteer organization's board severed ties with Van Orden last July, after he and other directors learned that she had diverted at least four mares for breeding to a registered stallion. He said the incidents were an aberration in an all-volunteer program that has matched more than 100 youths with horses in its five-year history.

Davis said Van Orden said she wanted the foals to expand the number of horses available to teens through the program. "But our whole idea is to help youth, not take care of babies," Davis said, adding that it would take years before a foal was ready to assign to a teen.

Van Orden, who lived in Veneta before moving to Ontario in Eastern Oregon, disagreed. "We had a list of kids who wanted horses, including several requests for foals," she said. "If a kid got a foal and raised it, by the time they graduated from the program, it would be ready to be under saddle."

But the Halletts said that they heard another explanation for Van Orden's breeding of mares from Kathy Fry, the Idaho woman who owns Alias Diamond Jim, the registered stallion that sired Ginger's foal. Fry said Van Orden told her "she was trying to sell the babies to get money to buy Jimmy (Alias Diamond Jim)."

Van Orden acknowledged telling Fry of those plans, but said she was referring to "my own personal foals," which were offspring of her own mares bred to the stallion. Van Orden said she poured her own time and money into the RIDER Summit program for more than three years, donating and hauling hay, arranging donation of 23 horses, and caring for many of them along with her personal herd.

She said she parted ways with Davis and the other board members over plans to sell some of the program's older horses at auction. "I thought it was totally wrong for horses that were donated, intending to go to a kid, ending up at a sale yard and going to a meat buyer," she said.

The Halletts eventually found Ginger in the care of a 12-year-old Eugene girl with whom Van Orden placed the pregnant Ginger before moving to Ontario.

The Halletts said they were distressed by Ginger's condition, and that her shaggy coat suggested that she had not been properly wormed in previous months. "And her feet and teeth had not been cared for," Cindy Hallett said.

Because RIDER Summit never filed necessary transfer papers, the couple were still legal owners of the horse and decided to reclaim her.

Davis, the RIDER Summit founder, said board members also found last summer that Van Orden had a history of complaints with the Lane County Animal Regulation Authority for improper care of horses. Animal control program manager Mike Wellington confirmed that investigators had been out to Van Orden's property near Crow Road "multiple times."

"She was probably maintaining 20 to 30 head," he said. "The complaints were mostly not enough feed, not enough vet care, that type of thing. ...The animals were never in the shape that would warrant any kind of prosecution. Joni was always cooperative and complied with any requests that we did have."

Speaking by phone from Ontario, Van Orden bristled at the suggestion that she failed to properly care for animals. "I've been raising horses for years, and I take good care of my horses," she said.

Former RIDER Summit board member Angela Hunsaker defended Van Orden, saying that she did the best she could, given little support from the organization.

"When I first joined the program, I went with Joni down to a board meeting in Powers where they talked about bringing the horses up here because they didn't have the funds to keep them down there. There were probably 40-some horses that Joni personally hauled up here. She placed an ad to get horses into kids' homes, but a lot did stay at Joni's place, and she was paying out of her own pocket for worming, farrier and vet care. It just seemed like she wasn't getting much help."

Hunsaker said she had heard Davis complain that the program needed better, younger horses. "If someone donates an 18-year-old horse, its going to be on its deathbed by the time the kid gets through the three years and earns it," she explained.

She said she heard Davis discuss breeding some donated mares to Van Orden's stallion to create homogeneously colored horses for a drill team.

Hunsaker also said horses donated to the program had been sold at a Eugene livestock auction in December, long after Van Orden's departure.

The Lane County sheriff's deputy who took Schill's complaint was not available for comment Tuesday, but a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture confirmed that it had referred her complaint to the agency.

"What we have here is a big can of worms," Kathy Fry said. "Somebody's heart might have been in the right place, but you don't do that. You don't breed mares that were donated to a program like this for kids."

CAPTION(S):

Gary and Cindy Hallett recently took back their quarter horse Ginger, which they had donated to a program that matches young people with horses in an effort to help youths avoid drugs and pregnancies. They reclaimed Ginger after finding that she had been bred. The Halletts' foal, seen here at 2 days old, romps on the family farm in Bellfountain. The foal is now 3 weeks old. "What we have here is a big can of worms." - KATHY FRY, IDAHO STALLION OWNER A n i m a l s