A Chugiak doctor charged with failing to properly care for her four horses is now being sued by the city of Anchorage for the cost of relocating and boarding the animals.
The horses – Glacier, Dually, Tank and Whinny – were found to be underweight and had been kept in an enclosure filled with as much as two feet of feces, among other signs of neglect, according to the city’s lawsuit.
Their owner, 55-year-old Patricia Gail Johnson, was arrested in April and charged with four misdemeanor counts of animal neglect. The city took custody of the horses, which range in age from 12 to 22, and put them in the care of a boarding facility in Wasilla, according to the lawsuit.
Since then, the city says it has been paying an average of a little over $16,600 a month to care for the horses and estimates the total cost through December will be about $124,000. That’s according to the lawsuit filed Oct. 7 seeking to recoup those costs, while the criminal case against Johnson continues.
According to the lawsuit and various reports attached to it, this is what the city says happened:
Multiple people concerned about the horses’ wellbeing started calling Anchorage Animal Care and Control in September of 2023, leading to a series of phone calls and several visits to Johnson’s home in Chugiak to check on the horses, educate Johnson on proper equine care and to issue warnings that the city might have to take further action.
In the visits, animal control officers and members of the volunteer group Alaska Equine Rescue did not see significant improvement in the horses’ condition and noted that Johnson was still not meeting the minimum standards of care for them.
Along with observing the horses standing in up to two feet of feces, they saw a frozen “ramp” of feces, mud and ice that posed a slipping hazard. The horses’ coats were also dirty and caked with mud and feces, and there were indications both in their physical condition and the amount of food they were getting that they had not been fed enough.
Johnson, a doctor with a family practice in Wasilla, told an officer at one visit that she had to cancel an appointment with a farrier, who was supposed to care for the horses’ hooves, because she had been dealing with a lot of work and her own mental crisis.
An animal control officer told Johnson she could surrender the horses to the city, but she refused. An officer also helped arrange a visit by a veterinarian, but as the winter continued, the horses’ conditions did not seem to improve while in Johnson’s care.
On another visit in late January, an animal control officer noticed that the horses had very little water to drink, and when he asked why, Johnson told him her hoses were frozen and that she had no other way to fill their water. Because her barn was unheated, the officer asked Johnson if she had blankets for the horses, and while she was able to find some blankets, most of them appeared unused and still in their original packaging.
By April, the officers and volunteers had seen enough. They turned over their findings – including reports, photos and videos – to Anchorage police.
Johnson was again offered a deal to surrender the horses and not be charged criminally. She again refused, and police arrested and charged her.
The horses went into the city’s custody, and the Alaska Equine Rescue group took them to a private boarding facility in Wasilla, where they were said to be slowly improving.
Anchorage city attorney Eva Gardner on Thursday declined to comment on the case. Johnson did not return voicemail messages or a text seeking comment.
City attorneys wrote in the lawsuit that if Johnson were to surrender the horses to the city, it would work to have them adopted out.
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
