NOTE: THIS IS NOT A JOKE OR A ZANY STORY. 
North Star, a loveable family horse is struggling to survive this week after being drenched with a flammable substance and set on fire over the weekend.
“I don’t know what would have possessed anyone to do this. I just know they are sick. They are a sick, sick person,” Jessie Woodworth, owner of the 6-year-old gelding.
“It’s a person with a degenerate mind,” Woodworth’s husband, Bob, added. “It would have been much more humane if the person had shot the horse instead of making it suffer.”
The Woodworths boarded North Star at a 60 acre ranch in Athens Township. Family members found him severely burned on Sunday morning.
“My wife and daughter found him hiding in the woods,” Bob Woodward told HuffPost. “He was completely out of it — in shock. The girls heard him whine for them. He was a mess and you could see where a liquid was poured on him and he was set on fire.”
The Marley Veterinary Clinic in Titusville is treating North Star. The animal is being administered pain medication and antibiotics. Prescription ointments are being used to help heal the wounds.
“He’s not over it by no means,” Bob Woodworth said. “He has burns all over his body. His face is burned right down to bone, his eyelashes are burned off and the hair in his ears and nostrils is gone. I don’t know how the animal survived. It’s going to be a long battle. It’s going to take him a long time to recover.”
TheDamienZoe would like to comment that whoever did this is seriously sick in the head — maybe even insane. Sadly, even if the culprit is caught, the crime of animal cruelty in the state of Pennsylvania are lenient.
State troopers from the state policebarracks in Corry are investigating. The individual or individuals responsible used an unknown accelerant to set the horse on fire, police said. No arrests have been made and no suspects have been named.
The Woodworths said they have no idea who targeted their horse.
“This is a member of our family. We raised him from birth. There is nothing this animal has done wrong to nobody,” Bob Woodworth said.
Animal cruelty is typically caused by people who are angry or have demented personalities, said Sarah Speed, Pennsylvania state director for the Humane Society of the United States.
“There have been a number of psychological studies done and we are learning that people who commit these types of crimes are typically angry and they turn to someone who is more vulnerable, like a child or an animal,”
Maybe this is not pertinent to the horror of all this, but why is this horse not on IV fluids? Our horse guy at TheDamienZone says that “he would expect to see the horse hooked up to a bunch of saline or “Normasol” bags hanging from a beam and a line going into his carotid vein? Maybe they give him fluids all at once, but burns like this usually require constant intravenous infusion to prevent hypovolemia ( loss of blood volume due to the leakage of lymph from the wounds). Whatever the case, hope he survives and the culprit is caught and spends about 25 years in jail. Whoever did this is truly sick.”
