The trial for a Parkland County woman accused of abusing horses continued on Friday. Patricia Moore was handed a lifetime ban on owning horses in April 2022 after she was convicted of causing horses to be in distress. She was arrested in April 2025 after horses were found in distress on her property. On Thursday, the vet contracted by the SPCA to examine the horses testified at the trial. She noted most of the horses were severely malnourished and all the horses had issues with their hooves due to lack of care from a farrier. She also testified that the carcasses of five horses were found on the property. The vet also said she the only evidence of food for the horses on the property was two bags of feed. She testified that the grass in the pastures where the horses were kept had been grazed down to the ground. On Friday, a two-hour long video of Moore’s interview with police after her 2025 arrest was played in the courtroom. In the video Moore told the officer there were 11 horses on her property on the day of her arrest, but said they were all owned by other people. She said she had previously owned several of the horses and they had been part of the previous SPCA seizure that led to the court order. She told the officer she “divested” her financial interest in the horses after her 2022 conviction by giving the animals away, but they continued to live on her property. She also said she was contesting the court’s order banning her from owning horses because she believed it was not valid. Moore claimed some of the horses were thin because of their age or because they were pregnant. She said one horse that the vet noted had serious issues with its hooves had been caught in a wolf trap as a filly and couldn’t receive proper farrier care as a result. When the officer asked Moore how the horses were fed, she said they were pasture fed, but did note one instance where a man had dropped off hay. She said she did not ask the man to bring hay, nor had she been responsible for paying him for it, but she did let him onto the property. When asked about the carcasses on the property, Moore said one of the horses had died from old age, another after it had been injured by a moose, and also mentioned a mare who died while she was giving birth to a foal. Most of the testimony and the video heard at Moore’s trial during the week was part of a voir dire, which is a legal process during a trial that helps a judge decide how to proceed on certain issues. In jury trials voir dire information cannot be reported on, but since Moore is being tried by judge alone that rule does not apply. A date has been set for Oct. 2 to hear submissions for the voir dire.
