About a month ago we had an incident at home.
Dusty always feeds the horses in the morning before work. Since we feed in the pasture and Pete gets only 1 lb versus Gem’s 3 lbs, whoever feeds stands between the two until they are finished. Otherwise Pete would gobble his and half of Gem’s too.
He fed that morning no issue.
I always feed in the evening. I grabbed the grain and headed out to the pasture like every other morning. As I was standing there, after completing the scratching ritual for both spoiled brats, I looked over and saw this:
Tire tracks. Leading out past the shelter. Inside my pasture fence. Well, crap.
My gut reaction was “WTH is our landlady doing inside my pasture?! Doesn’t she know the liability if one of them got out? We live on the corner of two busy roads.”
Of course it was 6 pm at this point and the rental office was closed. There wasn’t much we could do as neither of us wanted to call the cops on the landlady.
I sent the Hubby to Tractor Supply to get a heavy duty padlock for the gate. If someone wanted in again, they’d need a bolt cutter.
As soon as the rental company opened the next morning I was on the phone explaining the situation. Landlady is often seen mowing around our fence line and driveway so she was the obvious suspect. They contacted her and she called Hubby.
It wasn’t her.
Double crap.
Now my mind was wheeling. The only reason some unauthorized person would drive down my private driveway and through my closed gate with a truck would be to steal my horses. I couldn’t think of any other explanation.
Thankfully my horses aren’t friendly to strangers. Pete never did let the BM we boarded at for over a year touch him and barely put up with the last lady. Gem stays clear on the principal that she is better than anyone else and nobody has the right to be near her.
I’m thinking they entered, tried to wrangle up the horses who just ran away from them and gave up.
Scary doesn’t begin to describe it.
The cops were useless. With nothing broken, stolen or harmed all we had was a tire track in the mud and a gate that looked undisturbed. Apparently they only use plaster to make a mold of tire tracks and compare to known makes/models that use that tire on TV. CSI our local police force is not.
Thankfully no new evidence of trespassing has been seen since. Either the padlock is doing its job, beyond making life harder when trying to get in the pasture with grain and/or hay loaded hands, or they gave up since the horses weren’t cooperating. Either way my heart was in my chest for about a month.
The Roaming Rider 
I went to go check on ours last night, and we have an interior gate on our property that you have to go through our main gate to get to. I ALWAYS leave that gate open a particular way, and my husband has ZERO reason to touch it or alter it unless I’ve closed it.
Last night, it was in a way that I would NEVER have done, and when I asked him if perhaps he had, he said “No, I haven’t touched the gate.”
Suffice to say, I’m incredibly rattled. I always assume if someone comes on my property, they’ll steal my trailer (scrap metal). Or now our ATV or tractor. I always assume NO ONE wants my nags. My dad, however, he keeps saying someone will want to steal them.
At one boarding facility I was at, where I had enough horses to fill an entire pasture, we had a sign that noted all of our horses were microchipped in some vain attempt to prevent people from stealing them. Maybe, even if yours aren’t chipped, a sign might warn people off, or make them think twice?
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Scary!!! I want to freeze brand the horses. Well, Pete already sports two brands. But Gem is a plain bay. Easy to hide.
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That’s pretty scary. Glad the horses were ok and you have a mitigation in place.
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I’m not sure the padlock would stop a truly determined person but at least it is a somethinf
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omg that’s seriously unsettling, i’m so sorry! hopefully it was just a one time thing with some impulsive opportunistic idiots who won’t be back 😦
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Yeah. There has been a lot of horse thefts in the area lately. Not sure why but I’m guessing it has to do with the multiple huge horse sales that go on here this time of year. Stocking up on horses to sell off
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That is super scary! We live 1000+ feet off the main road down a dirt driveway, so I installed a (relatively) cheap surveillance camera. It is hooked to my WiFi (and an app on my phone) which notifies me if anyone comes down the driveway. Might be worth looking into?
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We may be moving soon, but if that falls through we will get some trail cams up
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that is scary. Not to mention if they were driving in your field they could have hit one of the horses (or as you said let them out). Course wonder if your landlady is lying too. Whatever glad you bolted the gate!!
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Very scary. My first thought was the liability if they got out and hit a car and killed someone.
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OMG that is terrifying. I second seeing if there is some sort of camera you can place in order to keep watch. I’m glad your horses are super adverse to being caught. I’m positive Scarlet would have let them catch him. It’s scary to even think of.
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It was! It’s one benefit of a hard to catch horse 😉
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I’m glad the horses are ok and nothing has happened since. I don’t mean any offense by this, but what do you want the cops to do? As you said, with no damage to you, your property or your horses and no incriminating evidence, I feel like it would be tough to find the person who matches the tire tracks. It’s definitely an unsettling situation and hopefully just a one-off thing that doesn’t happen again.
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I expected them to do nothing. As I said, we had nothing but a random tire track. Not even a broken gate. However, I wanted them aware that it happened in case they had other reports of similar activity or got any after ours.
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That is pretty nerve racking!!!! I do think the padlock will deter 99% of anyone trying to get in. It could of been some kids that wanted to pet the ponies and then when they couldn’t get anywhere nearby they left. People can be so dumb that I wouldn’t put it past some kids or a parent with kids that thought “oh hey lets go pet the horsies! We did it at Hollywild why not here too?”
Years ago I knew a horse that was let out of his pasture and sadly was hit by a pickup truck. The running theory was he was let out as a high school prank (the barn was right next to the high school, barn was there originally and then the county built the high school next door) but no one came forward with any info. He was the only horse that was out and everyone else was still in the field. The horse in question was old, arthritic, and one of the laziest horses in the world. No way in hell did he jump the pasture fence unless let out.
Glad though that everything worked out and your ponies are still safe in their field! Fingers crossed that the new place (whatever it may be) works out for you guys!!!!
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That is so sad. No way that old guy left on his own. 😦
There have been so many stolen horse posts around here lately it is a bit scary. Not sure if it has to do with all the big sales running this time of year or not but yikes. Keep your horses under lock and key. Makes me glad I don’t stall them as it would be super easy to grab them out of the barn and load up.
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That is so scary! Although….and I love Gem, but how funny would it be to be a fly on the wall if someone DID take her, to see how they’d react once they realized just WHAT kind of horse they’d stolen? I mean, it’s not as if Gem is a nice, dumb sweetheart that just anyone can handle. I bet you’d find her back in the pasture within a day.
But really, I hate that you have to go through extra security measures because people are losers. And I hope you get to move into the new place soon!
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Seriously though! I’m sure Gem would be seen angrily waiting for her breakfast at the gate as always having dumped the bonehead multiple times. Ha!
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That’s really scary. I put locks on everything.
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We do now
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That is very very frightening and I would have nightmares over it. I think that the padlock is a good idea. I hope you find a place soon.
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I was on high alert for several weeks
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