Animal control authorities said Sunday (Dec. 3) they have seized an estimated 74 horses and a 35-acre farm in Sharpsburg, Md., where poor care led to death, illness and malnourishment. Windrinker Farm owner Barbara P. Reinken, 61, denied mistreating the horses but conceded she had more than she could handle.

“The only thing I had wrong, I had too many horses, that’s all,”  Reinken, a 61-year-old registered nurse, told The Associated Press.

Reinken, who lives on the property, said her lifetime dream of owning a horse farm started crumbling after an accident in the late 1990s incapacitated her for 18 months