Law Offices of Krysia Carmel Nelson, PLC

11/28/2025

Parents! Calling all parents of horse crazy kids who sense participation in the sport will require spending the equivalent of college tuition. All we want is for our kid(s) to be happy, but to those uninitiated to the sport, it seems like…a lot.

Call me. Maybe you don’t feel like you actually need a lawyer. Maybe it feels funny to talk to a lawyer when you aren’t having any kind of a dispute with anyone. Maybe you feel like you should be able to talk to your kids trainer about how leases work and what’s involved with the purchase of a horse…but think of it this way: you are being asked to make a big financial investment, and spending real money will ALWAYS involve legalities that a non lawyer won’t appreciate. When you buy a house, you have a realtor show you properties, but you have a lawyer close the deal. What’s the difference between a horse and a house? One letter. U or R …. Either way U R going to spend a small fortune that can either be the dream of a lifetime or a heartache inducing money pit.

I mostly represent trainers. But increasingly I have been fielding questions from financially savvy parents who are uninitiated to the sport. There is no shame in asking questions and (unlike your kids trainer) I’m not invested in selling you a bill of goods.

For years, I have offered flat fee consultations to lawyers who practice outside of this area of law… pay for an hour of my time and pick my brain…ask me anything. And I can do that for you. I have been doing that for parents for years, actually, but lately I feel like the need is growing. I see the questions parents are crowdsourcing on social media…mostly good questions being met with a lot of authoritatively delivered but unsound answers. Not just about horse leases and purchases, but investing in horses, co-ownership, setting up LLCs, insurance, liability, risk management, commissions, tax, land use, pros and cons of boarding vs bringing the horse home. There’s been a lot of change in the sport in recent decades, and that has given rise to even more complexities that make your potential financial investment more precarious than ever. So even if you rode at some point in your past, you may no longer be as up to speed as you’d like to think.

I have taught in law school and professional (continuing education) settings. I’ve commercially published a legal newsletter focused on the horse industry and equestrian sport for over 30 years …so I have read and reported on just about every horse and horse sport related case that has come out during the tenure of my legal career. And I’ve been riding and showing and personally participating in horse sport for my entire life and I remember how my parents (my father more than my mother) really struggled to understand how to best support my horse habit within their financial means. Times have changed, but I remember all the questions my dad had when he read the first lease contract for a show horse he leased me the summer I was 16…and even what I learned that day was eye-opening.

Most trainers are good at what they do and knowledgeable horsemen. But they don’t have a legal education and they typically lack the ability to accurately articulate what are pretty complex legal concepts that arise in the context of equestrian sport. When my clients who are trainers have a question, they call me. You can too. A little education can go a long way.

The best way to reach me is to go to my website and submit an inquiry. It will come to me as a secure email and we can go from there. https://equestriansportslaw.com/contact-us/

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11/08/2025

Top Ten Trainer Tips To Avoid A Positive USEF Drug Test……

1. Avoid compounded medications. Yes, sometimes they are unavoidable. And yes, it is easier to buy the big tub of powder whatever (robaxin, for example) than to crush pills in a coffee grinder. But the compounding pharmacies can and do mess up dosages and ingredients, and by the time you get your notice of violation the container has been used up and thrown away, and you will be on the hook and unable to prove if the pharmacy made a mistake.

2. If you are using compounded robaxin, make sure whoever is medicating knows that they need to SHAKE THE CONTAINER every time. The robaxin settles at the bottom. I have seen more robaxin overages caused by an administration from a scoop at the bottom of an almost empty container…

3. Read all supplement labels and make sure you understand what every ingredient is. This sounds obvious, but apparently it is not. Most pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals will have more than one name, and sometimes the fancy sounding name looks better on a label but if they used the common name you’d realize right away that the product is not “show safe”. And there might be more not-show-safe products than show safe ones. Buyer beware. And, by the way, USEF is more than happy to review labels for you if you are unsure, and you aren’t giving up the ghost when you ask them for clarity.

4. Do not share horse show stalls. When a horse gets to a show, it should only get put in a stall with 100% fresh/new bedding, fresh hay and fresh water. Once it is at the show, it should only use that stall and no other horse should be allowed in that stall….not for even a minute. Make this a strict rule. It will still happen that a horse will get stuck in the wrong stall or a dirty stall, but if your staff and customers think it is a hard and fast rule, and see you lose your sh*t if it happens, then they will be diligent.

5. No dogs in horse stalls…not even for a minute. A medicated dog can contaminate a horse stall. Dogs can also pick up environmental contaminants and carry them (on their coats, paws and dog toys) into a stall. Do not underestimate the dog contaminant potential!

6. Responsibility for medicating horses should be assigned to one person and one person only. Beware the potential for grooms and customers wanting to be “helpful” and inadvertently double dosing or somehow otherwise screwing up your system.

7. Take feed buckets out of stalls by 8pm. Remove them. Dump them and wash them. Horses will leave medicated feed uneaten, morning feed gets dumped on top, and voila. if a horse tests positive for a medication that can be top dressing, USEF will always ask what time the horse was fed and when the buckets got taken out. Leaving the feed bucket overnight is just asking for an overage.

8. Treat medicated topicals the same way you treat orally administered medications, and do not give staff ready access to them or leave them in general circulation in grooming boxes. Almost any cream or ointment you get from a vet is going to have some kind of medication in it, and because many of these products will be compounded (sometimes even mixed up by the vets themselves) the ingredients won’t be listed. But a lot of that stuff has steroids in it and that’s the easiest way to get a dex overage…because if the horse gets a shot of dex and then some cream with dex gets applied to a wound or skin infection…voila, it’s over the limit. And because creams and ointments prescribed for one horse rarely get used up all the way, the leftover gets retained and used on some other horse. Scratches cream is the number one problem!!! If the stuff works like magic, it’s probably medicated, and don’t handle it casually.

9. Stalls are not human toilets. For the love of all that is holy, don’t let humans urinate in horse stalls. Not staff, not customers, no one, ever. Not just at shows…At home too!

10. Make sure you know when you need to file a med report….both as to the substance and as to the timing. This is trickier than ever now that you are supposed to file online and within a specific time window of administration (and sometimes there’s a poor internet connection). For example, Most of the cetirizine violations I see could have been avoided if the filing of the med report hadnt somehow been screwed up. And I wouldn’t necessarily rely on your vet to know the rules…I’ve heard lots of vets give out terrible advice 🤦‍♀️

I could go on and on. But these tips reflect the biggest problem areas. Even the most diligent trainers get foiled by a staff member or customer (or parent of a customer). Beware the well-meaning dad/ husband/boyfriend (sorry guys)…it’s great they want to be supportive and helpful, but OMG….that could be a post of its own. 🙈

02/26/2024

https://equestriansportslaw.com/houston-we-have-a-problem/

Houston, we have a problem. And I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks so…. There is little room at the shows for those of us who cannot afford the VIP experience and step up as sponsors. I can’t write a $5,000 check for anything without wincing. Tax time makes me cry. Paying the househol...

01/26/2022

The hearing to determine whether the New York Racing Association will be permitted to exclude Hall of Famer trainer Bob Baffert continued through its second day of testimony Jan. 25 with testimony from witnesses on behalf of the racing association. Tuesday's proceedings were taken up with the remain...

01/24/2022

My new website is LIVE!

Horse-people have different legal needs depending on whether their equestrian activities are professional or recreational. We can help, no matter your status.

01/04/2022

Think you don't need a lawyer to draft that contract? Think again...

The internet provides ample opportunity for people to find examples of contracts and contract language online for just about any transaction and situation. Unfortunately, that encourages non-lawyers to "play lawyer" by cutting and pasting -- creating a mish-mash of terms and conditions that seem to do the trick ... without having to pay a lawyer. It doesn't seem hard to do... and that's the problem.

Look, "contracts" is a year-long law school course. Lawyers go to graduate school for three years, and have to take a (minimum) two-day licensing exam, get licensed, do continuing education to maintain said license, and carry malpractice coverage. All this should suggest to everyone and anyone that "practicing law" requires a degree of expertise that is not easy to come by. There are good reasons why lawyers are made to jump through these hoops before they can take money from the public for the services they render.

In the early days of my practice, I would provide clients who were computer savvy with word doc versions of contracts I prepared. This was a disaster for many reasons. I stopped doing this when pdf became a thing. Now, computer savvy types have figured out how to edit and extract content from pdfs. When it comes to legal documents, this is not a clever thing to do. It is, in fact, still a disaster for many reasons. Inevitably, when a non-lawyer makes changes to an attorney drafted contract, they screw it up in a substantial and meaningful way that they are incapable of appreciating because they lack the expertise and legal training.

I get a lot of calls regarding transactions gone awry... mostly horse sales and leases, but also partnerships, co-ownership agreements, boarding agreements... the works. And in almost all these cases, there is either no written agreement, or the agreement is a mish-mash of legalese extracted (by a non lawyer) from an attorney drafted document and reformatted by a non-lawyer who wanted to avoid the cost of having an attorney customize a document.

I promise you, paying a lawyer to deal with the fall-out from a contract that wasn't drafted by a lawyer will ultimately cost you more than having a lawyer prepare the contract in the first place. Just sayin'

11/04/2021

A written opinion from U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil about why the wiretaps will be allowed is forthcoming.

11/02/2021

BIG NEWS out of the US Supreme Court! Horse trainers can again “medicate” horses in their care without fear of going to prison.

Wait, what? Feel like you missed a story along the way? You probably did!

During the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Justice took an unexpected interest in the practice of giving horses “performance enhancing drugs.” Except, some of these “drugs” were not so much drugs as they were supplement concoctions. But whatever euphemism applies best, the point is that the crap given the show horses also gets given to racehorses. Different crap, but the same. Crap. And since racing involves the betting public, prosecutions of that industry are more high profile for the feds. Also important is that certain Republican lawmakers were pushing for federal oversight of the racing industry, and these prosecutions were used to highlight the “doping problems” in the industry…leading ultimately to the passage of the Horse Racing Integrity Act as part of Trump’s COVID economic stimulus package. There’s some of your political backstory.

But when you think about giving performance enhancing substances to sport horses, anyone who knows the sport and knows anything about the law will scratch their head a bit and wonder, “the practice may seem unsavory to some, but how does it violate federal law?”

And this is where DOJ pulled an old trick out of its hat box — one that I’d seen used in the past to prosecute college kids who liked to play chemist and concoct intoxicating substances that defied classification as controlled substances. DOJ would get them under the FDA laws governing labeling and dispensation. You encounter FDA rules like these every day…when you pick up an over the counter (non prescription) substance, it has to have an ingredient list, and warnings, and manufacturer info, etc. on the label. Prescriptions can only come from a pharmacy relying on the prescription of a medical professional who has a DEA license. Basically, if you are going to ingest it, there are all sorts of regulations governing the people who make it and sell it to you, including how it has to be packaged and labeled. And someone who is evading those regulations for whatever reason …well, DOJ is going to treat them like a drug dealer. Or, more accurately, like an unlicensed pharmaceutical manufacturer…take your pick.

And so it is not hard to see how a horse trainer could be characterized to the feds in the same light…buying powders, pastes and injectables from compounding pharmacies and vets or whoever, and giving it to the horses in their care. Yeah yeah yeah, it was race horse trainers who went to jail, but show horse trainers do the same thing. Heck, owners are doing the same thing. And DOJ was going after vets, too.

Anyway, DOJ got a number of convictions that were affirmed on appeal. Interestingly, but sadly for some, there were lots of plea deals made so it remains to be seen whether those who got felony convictions and or jail time and did not appeal will get any relief from the Supreme Court’s ruling. But more to the point, DOJ got it wrong. The federal trial courts got it wrong. The federal appeals court got it wrong. And I have to say that I feel strongly that the US Supreme Court got it right. And everyone in horse sport can breathe a little easier…not that DOJ was going to come after everyone, but I hated being the bearer of the news that according to DOJ prosecutors, a lot of what we sport horse people do violates federal law. Today, we can all feel less like federal criminals.

The gist of the high court’s summary order amounts to a rejection of DOJ’s argument that it violates federal law for trainers to administer medications to horses in their care. There’s probably a lot more to it than that, but knowing the evolution of DOJ’s FDA mislabeling/misbranding/dispensing vs administration theory of prosecution, the Court’s summary reversal of the trainer’s conviction boils down to a proclamation that DOJ went too far. It may even be a sign that Biden’s DOJ Has backed off it’s own theory. Marketing the prosecutions as targeting rampant horse doping and protecting the integrity of the sport for the betting public….that just made the case sexy. Strip away the tabloid worthy headlines, and the prosecution’s legal theory just didn’t hold water.

08/18/2021

Gotten a notice of a USEF medication violation after getting tested at a show? Wondering how that's going to turn out for you?

It's gonna cost you $$$. End of story.

Oh, I know.... a groom made a mistake; your horse got loose and ate its neighbor's dinner; the feed supplement contained something that wasn't on the label; your horse got into the bowl of M&Ms in the tackroom. Stop. I have heard it all. You can give them the most plausible, tear-jerking sob story, and you will still have to pay a fine. USEF DOES NOT CARE.

They really don't. They send you that letter that asks for an explanation, but really, any explanation you provide serves one of two purposes. Keep in mind that based on their testing, they know how much of a substance the horse consumed/was administered and when. So, they are waiting to see if you lie to them... in which case they may come down harder on you. Or, if your explanation is plausible, they consider it a "teachable moment" -- next time you will be more careful.

But, under no circumstances, are they going to pat you on the head , "there, there. It's OK. No harm, no foul." That's NOT GONNA Happen.

Pull out the old check book because you will have to pay a fine. You will be offered a censure or a term of suspension. Take the offer (if they make one). You don't need to tell your story to the Hearing Committee because (and trust me on this), the Hearing Committee DOES NOT CARE either.

They gotta pay for the drug testing program somehow.... right?

05/18/2021

Leasing a horse -- some things to consider: When I was a junior, it seemed like leasing horses was not quite as popular as it is today. In-barn leases were common and a very good deal for the horse owner. But for lessees, if they understood the deal, it was a very risky proposition. "You break it, you buy it" was the norm, and I remember my father losing a lot of sleep over the prospect that the horse he was leasing me for the summer might get hurt and then we'd have to buy it. Nowadays, everyone seems to want to lease, (rather than buy) but there seems to be a lack of appreciation for and acceptance of the risks involved. What I see, with alarming frequency, is that lessees sign lease agreements and expressly assume the risk of injury to the horse, but when the horse (which was delivered to them in good condition) becomes ill or injured, they simply breach the lease. Suddenly, their agreement means nothing to them, and they feel fully (and unjustifiably entitled) to demanding the horse owner accommodate their change of heart.... usually at no more cost to them and at additional cost to the horse owner.

(If you are going through this and have contacted me recently, don't think that I am writing about you specifically. I get 1-2 inquiries PER WEEK with this scenario). So if you are going through this, you are not alone.

So, as a horse owner myself, there is no appeal to leasing out a horse I own (and I am regularly asked if I will lease a horse I am trying to sell). What used to be a good deal for a horse owner is now, in many instances, not a guarantee of anything because lessees don't seem to appreciate and accept the obligations and risks involved. Having the best drafted lease agreement doesn't always translate into the lessee being better behaved. No matter what someone signs, at the end of the day they have to be honorable and trustworthy.

I am putting this out there because I think the problem is that trainers are not fully educating their clients on what it means to lease a horse. Yes, it is risky. It is not less risky than buying a horse.

What are the characteristics of a successful lease arrangement? In general, people seem to find a lease satisfactory
1- when it is an in-barn lease, where the horse is staying in the same program
2- when the horse owner is willing (and easily able) to take the horse back at any time for any or no reason

I am not going to pretend that there aren't professionals who make a lot of money leasing out horses. But an individual amateur should think long and hard about whether they have the ability to bear the risk of the lessee not honoring their agreement. More power to you if you are the betting type.

04/02/2020

The Coronavirus Lock-Down. What does it mean for horsepeople?

1. You are supposed to stay home. This is the default setting. We want as few people circulating outside of their homes as possible. Some people can pull that off, but some people can't.

2. I am not going to get into a deep discussion of when it is "essential" or "necessary" to go to the store. You "need" your prescription medicine -- go to the pharmacy. Let's not debate how much you "need" that ice cream or refreshing alcoholic beverage. But if you are going to the grocery store, go with a mission and get in and out as quick as you can.

3. You "need" feed for your horses, but you do not need new toys for your dog (although your dog will disagree). Go to the feed store if they don't deliver -- get stuff delivered to you when you can.

4. If you take care of horses -- ones you own or ones that you are paid to care for -- then you "need" to go to the barn. Homeland Security has deemed caring for livestock to be "essential."

5. Does riding the horses constitute "care?" Yes. Exercising an animal is part of caring for it.

6. What about lessons? The Orders of the governors of Florida and Virginia permit outdoor recreational activity (with appropriate social distancing) but do not specifically mention mounted equine activities. I think that as long as social distancing protocols can be maintained, giving or receiving paid instruction while you are riding out of doors does not change the "outdoor" and "recreational" nature of the activity. It is certainly reasonable to say that riding horses is safer in a setting where a person is receiving supervision/instruction, and trainers should not be expected to provide their services for free. This position is based on guidance from the office of the Governor of Virginia that Northam's Executive Order does "not apply" to outdoor recreation facilities. There is an argument that all non-essential businesses are to cease operations and that the instructional component of a trainer's business is separable from the "horse care" component, is non-essential, and is therefore prohibited -- but the fact that I can argue the point either way just means that the orders are probably too ambiguous to be enforceable in this context.

7. What about moving my horses? A lot of people winter in the south and are now getting ready to head north to wherever they are based for the summer. The bottom line is that the order of a state governor cannot impede interstate travel, but they sure as heck want to discourage it. You may get stopped and questioned, but as a matter of law you can ship your horses as you typically would. But consider whether you really "need" to do that right this moment.

8. So why should we be concerned about these orders? Why can't we just carry on as we always have? The nitty gritty bottom line is that if you are outside of the confines of your home you are much more likely to have an encounter with law enforcement than ever before. Just being outside gives the police probable cause to stop and question you -- the governors have made violation of their orders a crime (granted, a misdemeanor...but still). And not all cops are going to behave reasonably -- some people are going to encounter cops who are beligerant or aggressive or simply high on their new and expanded authority. I think the biggest danger to any citizen is that an encounter with law enforcement will escalate with an uncertain outcome. I am not terribly worried about standing in front of a judge to defend someone on a charge of violating a stay at home order when they were trying in good faith to comply with that order.

Try to lay low. Hopefully you have good internet access and can get your horse-fix watching horsey videos.

10/14/2019

I've added a ton of new content to my website. Check it out, under the tab "Free Information"

The horse industry is a multi-faceted and unique environment that is at once a business, a sport and a culture of its own.  Horse-people have different legal needs depending on whether their equestrian activities are professional or recreational.For more than 20 years, Krysia Carmel Nelson has prov...