“Her tail is just barely hanging on,” says Vonda Hamilton of Dixie, her 2-year-old Spotted Saddle Horse filly whose tail was ignited and burned by trespassers during the night of Aug. 19 near Erwin, N.C. Hamilton is treating the filly’s tail and leg burns around the clock as officials from the Harnett County Sheriff’s Office investigate allegations that have been made against a group of minors in the incident, say local news reports.






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COURTESY VONDA HAMILTON


Dixie’s injury on Aug. 22. For more photographs of the injury over time, click here. Warning: some of these photos are graphic.


Hamilton told The Horse she had left for a weekend vacation the morning of Aug. 19 and didn’t discover the catastrophic injury until she returned on Aug. 22. The horses’ caretaker had noticed an anomaly in her tail only from a distance and didn’t realize the severity of the injury, and he hadn’t wanted to bother Hamilton during her time away

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