Discredited Activist Stalks Rancher

North Dakota rancher Gary Dassinger is living a nightmare most only see in a Hollywood drama.   His reputation, his business and his family are being threatened by a veterinarian with an established pattern of lying about animals for profit.   Over 10 years ago, veterinarian Kim Brummond was sued for defamation by a former employee and fellow veterinarian Alissa Forster.   When Forster filed an unemployment claim, Brummond libeled Alissa Forster claiming she was the subject of an animal abuse case and had illegally sold prescription medication across state lines.   To bolster her case Brummond filed multiple false police reports.   A police investigation cleared Forster completely while Brummond passed false rumors around the state, made fake claims to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the State Veterinarians Office claiming Forster was some sort of dangerous master criminal who repeatedly burglarized her clinic, stole drugs, abused animals and even more lurid, Brummond claimed that Forster poisoned and killed Brummond’s horse. 

Unable to find a job in North Dakota due to Brummond’s slander campaign Alissa Forster sued Brummond for defamation.   Brummond was found guilty and fined a quarter of a million dollars.   Brummond appealed and continued slandering Alissa Forster.   The North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the judgement against Brummond in 2004.   After losing in court, Brummond simply refocused her sights on other victims like her current target Gary Dassinger. 

In 2013, North Dakota voters defeated a deliberately vague Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) law that would make it a felony to ‘intentionally’ harm a dog, cat or horse only to watch the state legislature cave in pass it anyway.  

Making “animal cruelty” a felony sounds great to those who don’t know how the animal rights movement twists and perverts the law in America’s notoriously corrupt courtrooms.   Adding to this, HSUS offers their fruitcake ideology packaged as “law enforcement training” for free to over 2,000 power hungry prosecutors and law enforcement officers per year.   If cops need special training from a vegan group to determine what is and isn’t animal cruelty, then what they are looking at isn’t animal cruelty. 

“While it is important for law enforcement to recognize a potential animal cruelty case, it would be in their best interest to work with a veterinarian to evaluate and assess the situation,” Goehring said. “I believe HSUS's intentions behind this training are misleading as they have a long history as an animal rights activist organization with the intention of ending animal agriculture. HSUS is encouraging and training law enforcement to identify and seize animals without a veterinary inspection and assessment.”  North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring.

Don’t worry, HSUS routinely deflects criticism such as Goehring’s by bringing in local puppets such as discredited veterinarian Brummond to take the fall during their seizures.   Brummond ran to the media to defame Dassinger with her lurid claims of abuse similar to how she defamed Alissa Forster which the Grand Forks Herald and other news media was delighted to publish without any fact checking of Brummond’s notorious fantasies.

"The first thing we noticed as we drove up the drive was all the junk and debris strewn around and the dilapidated condition of the facility," Brummond said. "We got out of our vehicles and the first thing that struck me was the smell of rotting and decaying flesh in the air, and we could see a very thin, emaciated mare with a foal just off to our right."

Sounds shocking right?   Except like her fantasies about Dr. Foster, Brummond’s knowledge exists only in her fertile imagination.  She admitted that she used the Henneke Body Conditioning Scale to make fraudulent abuse claims against Dassinger, yet according to equine scientist Dr. Henneke, the system he invented is not supposed to be used for criminal cases at any time.   

“Over the past decade, the Body Condition Scoring System for Horses (BCS) has become, in many if not most cases, the sole reason for the seizure for neglect or abuse.  The problem with this is that the BCS was not designed to reflect the health or well-being of the horse.”  Dr. Don Henneke.

The animal rights movement encourages witnesses to use this system to file false charges of abuse at anyone they want to target knowing that Dr. Henneke died in 2012 and can’t testify against HSUS as he did in the Parkinson horse case in Maryland.   

“This seizure appears to have been conducted to make a point.  The videos indicate that the majority of the people present at the seizure were not trained in the application of the BCS, and the one person who was “trained” exhibited extreme bias in her instructions and comments.  At the very least, this person showed a complete lack of understanding concerning the fat deposition patterns of the Arabian horse.  She did not demonstrate in any manner an ability to accurately apply the BCS accurately to this breed that has distinct evolutionary differences from many other breeds concerning the storage of fat”  Statement of Dr. Don Henneke in support of Marsha Parkinson, 2012.

The reason these body scoring systems do not work is one size does not fit all in horses any more than it does in dogs.  What is an appropriate weight for one horse is not the same for the next horse.   Just as what is an appropriate weight for a Chihuahua is not appropriate weight for a Great Dane.  Some animal rights activist with a clipboard eyeballing a horse and giving it a ‘grade’ should never be used as a standard to charge someone with animal cruelty in a court of law. 

It gets better.   At first, they pulled the wool over the local courts who issued a seizure order for some of Dassinger’s animals based upon Brummond’s claims that the horse and foal would die without being immediately stolen.    As is typical in these policing for profit cases, they showed up unannounced with raid trucks ready to steal animals they had never set eyes on before they stole them.   Only quick thinking by Gary Dassinger stopped them.   He called his lawyer, Thomas Murtha, who quickly filed a temporary restraining order against the Sheriff’s Department before they could complete the seizure. 

"I've been breeding these horse for 40 years, and I have a really good herd of horses," Dassinger says. "And it's like, my 40 years is just going to be gone."   Third generation rancher Gary Dassinger.

The prosecutors like all good animal rights indoctrinated cult members, presented their laughingstock of a case to the Stark County Court system and couldn’t even tell the difference between the adult horse and a baby horse.   Following the civil lawsuit designed to strip the Dassinger family of all their money and assets, then following the animal rights textbook, Gary Dassinger was charged with four felony counts of animal cruelty and six misdemeanor counts of animal neglect.   Even more frightening, other media outlets have reported that the Sheriff’s office was secretly working to sell off Dassinger’s animals for profit prior to their seizure.   It has been reported that Stockman’s Livestock Yard refused to go along with the planned theft and refused to allow Dassinger’s cattle to be sold through their yard. 

“It was discovered that bills of sale were prepared to transfer ownership of the horses once they were seized.” “Once others in the community found out the plan for Gary’s herd of horses, it started a barrage of phone calls to the State’s Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Department.  The plan was changed for the horses.  A bill of sale was issued to a horse welfare organization that had requested to step in and help.”

These activists are using tax payer money to destroy the Constitutional rights of hard working Americans like the Dassinger family.  If Gary Dassinger is found guilty of the criminal charges against him, no farmer in America is safe.   Just like HSUS and their allies are rapidly outlawing American pet breeders and replacing them with foreign puppy mills supplying the multi-billion dollar American rescue dog trade, Americans will soon be buying all of their meat from foreign countries when America’s ranchers simply can’t go on under this punishing animal rights climate.   Over 800 million pounds of foreign raised meat is imported into America every year and fraudulently labeled as made in the USA.  Cattle ranchers are fed up and have sued the USDA.    Your own government is lying to you how America’s animals are treated and where they come from and most Americans have no idea.