Former shelter director charged with neglecting rescued horses
The controversial former executive director of a Pittsburgh animal shelter has been charged in Indiana County with failing to provide sufficient food, water and shelter for horses that she rescued.
The charges were filed last week against Joy Braunstein by Mindy James, a humane police officer for Paws Across Pittsburgh, a nonprofit rescue group.
On Monday, Ms. Braunstein, a Squirrel Hill resident and the onetime head of the former Western PA Humane Society, said, “The idea that I would knowingly put any animal at risk is absurd, after I spent thousands of dollars for rescue, transport and veterinary care.”
The charges relate to horses kept at facilities in Rochester Mills and Clarksburg, Indiana County, that were operated by Crystal Thornsberry of Heart Felt Equine Rescue.
The police criminal complaint lists two counts of “neglect of animal.” One count says Ms. Braunstein “when she was in affiliation with Crystal Thornsberry ... failed to provide necessary sustenance and potable water to the horses in her possession.”
The second count says Ms. Braunstein “knew that Crystal Thornsberry only provided a fenced in area with no shelter.”
Ms. Thornsberry of Rochester Mills was charged Jan. 8 with 12 counts of neglect of animals.
The August passage by the Pennsylvania Legislature of Libre’s Law requires animals to have shelter, the humane officer wrote in the affidavit of probable cause. That law stiffens penalties for people who abuse or neglect animals.
Both women will have a preliminary hearing on March 21 before District Judge Jennifer Rega in Blairsville, Indiana County.
When Ms. Braunstein rescued several horses from Mississippi last summer, Ms. Thornsberry offered to board some of them, Ms. Braunstein said in a telephone interview.
They were “pasture boarded” with no barn until October, which Ms. Braunstein said is a not uncommon method of keeping horses. By October, the rescued horses were in a pasture where they had access to a “run-in shelter” with a roof and three sides that would shelter them from rain and snow, she said.
Court records indicate that the charges against Ms. Braunstein and Ms. Thornsberry stemmed from Sept. 28.
The horses were in good shape, said Ms. Braunstein, who visited them on multiple occasions. When she learned in January that Ms. Thornsberry was charged with animal neglect, Ms. Braunstein said she contacted Ms. James, the humane agent, to tellher she would remove her horses as soon as the weather permitted.
On Feb. 1, Ms. Braunstein leased a barn and pasture she calls Above the Fray Stables, where she plans to care for rescued horses and board horses owned by others.
In February 2016, Ms. Braunstein resigned as executive director of the North Side shelter then known as the WesternPA Humane Society.
At the time, former employees estimated that during Ms. Braunstein’s 13month tenure, more than a third of the roughly 60-member staff was either fired or quit.
An online petition that circulated demanding her removal also described Ms. Braunstein’s decision “to purchase a collie puppy from a breeder who charges $1,000 per pup as opposed to adopting one of the dogs at her own shelter or another dog in need of rescue” as “the height of hypocrisy.”
After her Facebook page showed photos of the puppy she purchased for her young son in January 2016, more than 1,400 signed the petition calling for Ms. Braunstein’s resignation or dismissal.