JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Vicki’s Rescue Ranch, the animal rescue accused of taking a Mandarin couple’s miniature horses after a house fire, has hired an attorney. This comes just a week after the Garretts signed with Terrell Hogan.
From the start, the rescue’s owner, Vicki Bozeman, has been adamant that the couple surrendered these horses to her.
“I just want my name cleared up,” Bozeman said. “I didn’t go to someone’s house and steal her ponies.”
The eleven miniature horses originally belonged to Alison and Gary Garrett. During the fire, the Garretts called Bozeman to pick up all eleven horses under what they thought was a temporary arrangement.
The Garretts claim they did not surrender the horses. They said no paper was signed, and they did not realize that the arrangement meant they would not be getting their horses back. Bozeman, however, says that although the agreement was verbal, there are multiple witnesses who can attest to the couple surrendering the horses.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” Bozeman said. “I’ve never signed nothing.”
It’s important to note that even though Bozeman’s rescue calls itself a non-profit, Bozeman says she’s not officially registered as a 501(c)3.
Still, Bozeman says she spent seven hours rescuing the miniatures. She says that within the seven hours, she was kicked and bruised, leading her to go to the hospital immediately after leaving the Garretts’ property.
The Garretts say that when they contacted Bozeman to retrieve the horses a few days later, she refused to return them. But Bozeman says that’s not how it happened.
Bozeman claims that Alison went to her rescue a couple of days following the fire, but not for the horses.
“She came in a car, and she didn’t want her ponies,” Bozeman said. “She came to get blood work done.”
In the following weeks, the Garretts, their farrier, Lexi Willis, and various people in their inner circle scoured horse Facebook pages looking for answers on each horse’s whereabouts. Finally, Willis spotted an auction ad that had one of the horses, Rosie.
The Ocala auction says that the lister, who was not Bozeman, had approximately seven listings. Willis says that three of those listings were of the Garretts’ horses. This discovery led the Garretts to find six of the nine missing horses — all of which were on the same property.
Donna Tomlinson, a friend of Bozeman’s responsible for driving one of the trailers full of horses off the Garretts’ property the day of the fire, says those horses belonged to her.
Tomlinson says that two days after the fire, she adopted six of the horses from Bozeman. She says that she acquired a bill of sale for each of the six. However, we know at least one of the horses, Rosie, had an existing bill of sale belonging to Ashley Hum.
Still, Tomlinson said she went out of town for three days, and when she returned, all six had been removed from her property without her permission.
“Once you relinquish something and release ownership, then whoever purchased them ponies from her would have to go back to her,” Tomlinson said, referring to Hum’s ownership of Rosie.
Tomlinson said she adopted the six horses from Bozeman so she could have pony parties on the weekends. When asked about the auction listings, she said she had contacted some individuals in Florida and Georgia to bid on the stallions.
“Whether anybody believes it or not, this money from the stallions that was acquired was going to go back to Miss Garrett,” Tomlinson said.
Tomlinson also claims that the horses were living in poor conditions on the Garretts’ property and that multiple horses were in poor health.
We reached out to the Garretts’ attorney, Aleksas Barauskas, regarding these allegations. He says that my reaching out was the first time he’s heard these claims.
“Listen, all we’re trying to do is recover the last three of the horses, and if you can make that happen, this matter is resolved,” Barauskas said.
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