Elizabeth Giles - Page 30

                                       - 30 -                                         
          Petitioner not only did not “just breed away”; she rarely bred              
          her horses at all.  The record indicates, and we find as a fact,            
          that petitioner has bred only two of her seven horses that                  
          survived birth, the first in 1988 and the second only four times            
          in approximately 14 years.  Although petitioner attempted to                
          rationalize the minimal breeding of her horses by testifying that           
          she endeavored to breed her horses only with “national champions”           
          in order to improve the value of the foals, she contradicted that           
          testimony shortly after giving it by testifying that she aimed to           
          breed her horses either with national champions or with simply              
          “good horses”.  We do not find that all, or in fact any, of the             
          horses which petitioner used to breed her mares were “national              
          champions”.                                                                 
               We also are unpersuaded by petitioner’s assertion that her             
          minimal breeding was due to her belief that the design of the               
          Falling Water Way property allowed her to breed only one of her             
          horses at a time.  Although the Falling Water Way property has              
          only four stalls in which to keep horses, petitioner acknowledges           
          in her reply brief that horses can also be kept in the pens.  We            
          also note that even if the Falling Water Way property did limit             
          petitioner’s keeping of horses on the property to a maximum of              
          six, an assumption that the record does not allow us to find as a           
          fact, she has never owned six horses at one time and she has                
          never kept more than three horses on the Falling Water Way                  






Page:  Previous  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  38  39  Next

Last modified: May 25, 2011