Less than a month after one horse died and another was seized from a Hartland home for alleged neglect, a Windsor woman has been charged with animal cruelty for allegedly failing to feed, water and provide adequate sanitation for her horses.

Jamie McMillan-Fontaine, a resident of Hunt Road, was charged with 2 counts of animal cruelty in White River Junction District Court in late February.

Her horses were taken from her farm, with a warrant, by animal welfare authorities last May after an area resident reported that the horses appeared extremely undernourished, according to court documents.

"These horses were so weak," Nina McCoy, the director of the Lucy Mackenzie Humane Society in Woodstock, said. "The (pinto mare) would just stand there with her head hanging down. She wouldn't move."

The condition of McMillan-Fontaine's horses was witnessed because she was looking for a place to board the animals, a Pinto and a gray mare, in April, according to an affidavit by Lt. Vincent Jordan.

The affidavit says that witnesses had reported severely emaciated horses that were being kept in an area where there was no water, no food and no feces, which Jordan was told they were probably eating to survive. Jordan said photos taken of the horses and their place at the barn showed animals that looked like "skin and bones, dirty and ragged."

When state veterinarian Todd Johnson looked at the photos, Jordan said, he "stated that he believed that the horses were being deprived of adequate food, water and necessary medical attention."

McCoy said when she, Jordan, some volunteers and 2 state troopers went to seize the horses, their conditions were similar to that account. "When we went up to get the horses there was water there but there was no food to be found," she said.

According to the affidavit, veterinarian Heather Hoyns examined the horses and instructed McCoy to remove them from their living conditions. "A check of the paddock area and the adjacent barn for feed, grain, and or hay was negative," the affidavit says. "There was no food for the horses."

Jordan's report says that McMillan-Fontaine told him she had missed some veterinarian appointments and that she had been feeding her horses with a special diet.

Jordan's report also says there was an investigation of McMillan-Fontaine in 1998, when a veterinarian said her 3 horses and a pony were thin, underweight and probably undernourished. One of the horses and the pony have since died.

Despite McMillan-Fontaine's reported protests that her horses would die if given hay to eat, McCoy and Jordan both report that the diet the mares were put on after their seizure has agreed with them. "These horses just flourished," McCoy said. "I did not recognize them," Jordan wrote after seeing the horses in July. "They were no longer puny, ragged, skin and bones. They appeared healthy ... full of life and double in size."

The horses will remain in foster care until the case is concluded.

Each charge of cruelty, misdemeanors by Vermont law, can carry a maximum penalty of 1 year's imprisonment or up to a $2,000 fine, or both.

No criminal charges have been issued in the Hartland case, in which one horse died the day before its mate was seized by authorities in late January.

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