When the Clydesdale I’d had for 20 years passed in 2013 I wanted to buy another however the breeder that I had gotten my Clydesdale from was no longer in business. Purchasing a horse from another farm off Long Island would mean that I would have to add the cost of shipping to the price of the horse. I had heard there were some Shire horses on Long Island whose owner had died so I started looking for them. I didn’t find those horses, they wound up going to Bluestar Equiculture. But I did find Quiet Time Shires, a commercial carriage business located in Ridge, New York. After seeing some photos of Quiet Times’ horses I called and inquired if they had anything for sale, but they did not.

I stayed in touch hoping that Cynthia Shultes, the owner, might change her mind. At that time Jon Katz was doing a lot of writing in his Bedlam Farm Journal blog about the carriage horses in New York City. I forwarded a lot of the articles to her and we kept up the dialogue. Early summer of 2014 I went to visit the home of Cynthia Shulties and the horses for the first time. We were going to put some harnesses on the horses and drive them. Cynthia picked me up at the train station and we went up to her house in Ridge. As we pulled into the driveway I noticed that there were valuable carriages uncovered sitting next to a 8 x 30 horse trailer, instead of inside of it, where they would be protected from the elements. That was the first red flag (actually the second, there were three hefty bags full of empty Budweiser Beer cans on the back seat of her truck).

When we walked into the backyard where the stable was my heart dropped down into my stomach but I managed to keep a straight face. There were nine Shires. Two of them were the skinniest horses I have ever seen, photos do not convey the true appearance. One of the nine was on the verge of a corneal eye melt. Three of them had a severe skin disorder. One had a tail matted with filth from what seemed to be a long-term intestinal disorder.

I was trapped there for five hours since I arrived by train. Within the first hour of meeting her, I found out quite a lot; Cindy had three starved Great Dane dogs that spent their time in crates, a chain link kennel outside, or being walked on a leash up and Down her street. She had a dog trainer who came to train and had been pleading with her to give the dogs back to her. Also, the neighbors had called the SPCA about the dogs several times, however, nothing had changed. There was a tent garage on the property that was filled with hay and a van with stored grain in it. Cynthia explained to me that the reason why the horses were in such poor condition was because she had changed their feed and that the new grain had made them drop off weight. (Absurd!) 

Cynthia had an equine nutritionist come out and visit because that service was provided free of charge by the Purina feed company. Cindy was crazy, yes, but she was also very smart. She had a paper trail created that helped keep all the animals trapped there. The law states that as long as there’s feed and shelter on the property that’s all the animals need.

From my experience in the 90s with the starved Clydesdales I didn’t expect that the authorities would be doing much to liberate the animals from their situation. That evening when I got home I called Cindy’s veterinarian, whom I knew, and told him that three of the horses would certainly die if they were not taken from the property immediately.

Within a couple of days Cindy called and said that the Brookhaven town authorities were there and that due to a zoning violation, she needed to remove five of the horses from her property immediately. Bravo, brilliant. Finding a place to board five draft horses on Long Island was not an option. The authorities were very helpful and put her in touch with Connecticut Draft Horse Rescue, they offered to assist by fostering her horses for the price of feed.

Stacy Golab and her nephew came down and Cindy let them use her truck and horse trailer to transport the 5 horses (two blacks, who were emaciated, two brown/bay horses, both had skin disease and one needed its eye removed, and a gray mare with the skin disease Sweet Itch) up to their facility in Connecticut. The four Shires that came to East Hampton were the ones that were left behind.

Connecticut Draft Horse Rescue quickly pressed charges against Cynthia for neglect. There was a trial that dragged through the courts for over a year. During that time I continued to visit the horses in Ridge. (Cindy slipped on the ice and broke her hand while hauling a bucket of water out to the horses. She had let the outside spigot freeze.)

In December 2014, I bought a half-ownership share of the broodmare Oxkill Adventress. I moved Tess to East Hampton in December 2014. In the Spring of 2015, the night before Cindy‘s sentencing, she allowed me to take the other three Shires to East Hampton. Cindy was found guilty of neglect. She was sentenced to two years probation( and figured out a way to drink while on probation earlier that year. The court determined that she could keep her horses. Fortunately, they were already in East Hampton and she was too disfunctional to come get them.

I had a boarding agreement with Cindy however she never visited the horses or paid me a cent. In effect, she abandoned the Horses. I moved the horses to Dune Alpin to be out on pasture in the summer of 2015. I had to move them again in late fall of 2015 because at that time I did not have use of the barn on the property. I kept them at the old pheasant-run stables that had been purchased by the Whitmore family to use as a tree farm for a year.

In the Spring of 2017, I moved them back to Dune Alpin and we did fundraising so that I could board the horses out that winter of 2017-2018. However, at the end of the Winter, there wasn’t enough money to keep all four horses so I gave two to Stacy‘s nephew and his wife and they went up to Connecticut. The other two horses came back to Dune Alpin farm and would be there now had the mare Tess not had a hoof abscess spread to her joint. Tess needed a 20,000  surgery.

At that time, in early winter 2019, Tess and her daughter “ Baby” who I called Isabelle were given to the family that had the horses I gave up in the Spring. That way Isabelle could be reunited with her herdmates while Tess had her surgery that they agreed to pay for. That was the end of the Shires living in East Hampton.

A word about Cynthia Shulties. She had been a respected member of the local driving club. The horses and turnout (harness and attire) were exquisite. Cyndy told me her father taught her to drink when she was upset when she was a minor. Cyndy had an anxiety disorder and had been on Zanax for years. Her husband left her. CPS took her son. Her Dr over-prescribed Zanax for sexual favors. She was a hoarder; I realized that when I was fixing something on the property and she accounted for every screw. I don’t know why she abused the animals, she had loads of assets. Yes, it was evil, drugs and alcohol do have that effect on people.