No ground wires or anything electrical. I don’t have power run down to the barn yet, I just have solar path lighting and motion lights.
By her behavior you would really think that she got fiercely zapped by something but I don’t have any hot wire or anything electrical down by my barn yet, I only have solar path lighting and motion detection. The most exciting thing we have in my area is coyote and foxes.
Florida is a real hot spot for horse theft, all my family is down there so I hear of it often, it’s frightening! I think location is big and the access to the vacant home/land next to for easy access to my horses and barn is what has played against me. I can’t imagine someone opening those gates either just to get a peek at my tack room… plus still doesn’t explain my horses behavior. I guess I could sit around and guess and wonder… it’s unsettling to think about but I’m just going to amp up cameras, locks and lighting. I think whoever it was gets the picture with my new signs out front, as I’m sure they’ve driven by since.
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Thanks everyone for the advice, the whole situation has really shook me. After walking my property and the property next door, finding foot prints between my hay barn and fencing leading to my gates, and the fact that my camera at my house shows no activity such as someone knocking on the door with concern for my animals, I think this was an opportunistic person that saw the easy access to my horses with the vacant home and land next door. I’m thinking that when I came home to the foot prints, that I may have pulled in while they were there. With the way they left the gate chains might explain why they accidently left tracks through the fresh laid leveling sand, as I’m sure whoever it was didn’t intend to let me know they were there. Additional cameras, signs, an extra motion light, and heftier lock are all going up. It’s stressing but I can’t sit around and drive myself nuts, I hope whatever happened to my horse certainly doesn’t happen again though!
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I think too many of you are giving too much credit to wanna-be thieves. Chances are, no, they weren’t scared off because a scared-off person would have probably left the gate open. We know how we latch gates and leave things because we do it all the time. Someone else won’t remember how a gate was latched or chained. I promise 99.5 percent of thieves are not a. criminal masterminds, b. considering whether or not you know they were there. If you notice and make changes, okay they move to the next victim; if you don’t, good for them, they come back and get what they scoped out. They aren’t thinking about footprints, or if they are they don’t care because it is not a form of solid ID like a fingerprint (helpful yes, solid no).
Someone probably wanted to come see the pretty-pretty horses, maybe see if someone was there to ask about riding. Or they saw them running and went in to make sure things were okay. Or they were the cause the of running. We will probably never know.
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I’m not saying they had a horse trailer parked down the road and they planned a great escape with my animals. But it’s obvious someone snuck through the back of my property while I was not home and went through my gates. I don’t think whoever did this, did this wanting to let me know they were there or they would have knocked on the door. I mean 
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I’m not discounting your experience or thoughts, but some of the comments were really getting into conspiracy level stuff 
Just trust me, the average criminal is not thinking about the crime as deeply as you(g) think, and the bell curve is really very shallow.
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Peacocks are both territorial and curious, and an entire flock acting as a unit will investigate trespassers. They threaten unfamiliar humans, …
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Along these lines, I want guineas! Also peafowl but I’m only on nine acres, they like to wander, and we have a LARGE feral population all around me. LARGE. Like a trailer park about two miles away is literally plagued with them, there are about 30 roaming adults. But I want them anyway I must like annoying creatures (birds of a feather?)
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peacocks sure would be rated at least in the top of the classification of annoying things …neighbor had a herd of them for along time…have not been there for at least 25 years but in my mind I still hear them
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i hope those neighbors behind you hurry up and move in!!! And they are friendly and remain your horses’ main protectors from behind.
Love all of StormyDays suggestions!
Me? i’d have a gun ready…and i’d bring in my horse(?..did you have more than one?) for a while. At least until i had cameras set alone the perimeter and electrified the fence. When you’re home you can turn out.
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Short term, lock your paddock gates. New construction brings intruders and looks loos.
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Peacocks are loud and will annoy you and the neighbors both.
Geese are great “watch-animals” but they’re messy–they poop everywhere. And they can’t easily be called off. They’ll go after the UPS person, the mail-person, your ancient aunty who’s trying to get out of her car, etc. They’ll also go after your dogs, and then the dogs will go after them.
Also, some horses get it into their heads that chasing geese is fun. I had such a horse when she was boarded at a place that kept geese. She became somewhat obsessed. But my biggest gripe then was the goose poop everywhere. And that was from 4 or 5 geese.
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No, they aren’t, but that makes them actually more dangerous because they will take risks that they shouldn’t. They also will and do plan their break ins. Whomever was on her property had likely been there before or had been watching her.
Theft is a pretty serious issue and as someone who has been the victim of 2 attempted break ins while I was home, I am overly cautious about this and suggest others are too. Make your house a hard target so other houses look easier.
I’ll just share one of my experiences. A young female in an older beat up car drove up my very long driveway. She got out of her car and walked a bit around my house, then said she was lost and looking for a different address when I approached her. I told her that it wasn’t here and she left.
She then sat down at the local gas station (you could see my driveway from there) for at least several hours. About 6 hours after the initial contact, she thought I had left (my mom and dad had driven out of the driveway, but I was still at the house. Car in the garage, so she hasn’t seen it earlier). About 30 minutes later, I hear a car pull up to my house. I go to the back door and listen. I can hear at least 3 voices, two of them men, the last one the girl from earlier. Two try the front door knob, and the other (s) try to manually open my garage door. When this happens, my dog, who was old but sounded big and scary, starts barking up a storm and they all decided I was a difficult target and left.
Point is, they do plan these things. They thought I was gone and the house was empty.
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I am completely aware of this. Again, it isn’t genius level thinking.
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Sorry that happened to you, that’s very scary. Even an opportunistic thief will case a place, it’s true. The home we just moved from we had a woman knock on our door at 2am, claiming she needed help. Held up an ID to our stained glass door, like that really means anything to us, and said she needed a phone to use. Our house was off a main road that was a mile long, we were right in the middle. There was a gas station a half mile each way. She continued to try and make a sob story for us to open the door. My husband continued to listen to her while I called the cops, he asked her if she would like us to call the police for help, she quickly said no thank you and left. I watched the cops go up and down our street within three minutes, shining lights between houses…
For someone that needed help, she sure walks fast.
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I was thinking the same as @candyappy, as we have had that scenario of people chasing after their loose dogs ending up in a pasture, almost seeming like it didn’t occur to them there were even horses there.
Another time there was a search and rescue party with big tracking dogs wearing bells in the middle of the night that cut across the pasture looking for an elderly woman who had wandered away from her home and got lost in the woods. People + dogs + search lights + bells really freaked out the horses, who are used to living in the woods with all kinds of wildlife passing through.
I really hope whatever happened for you OP was nothing sinister and just an unfortunately clueless neighbor who didn’t pay attention to what they were doing.
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I just hope whatever went on doesn’t go on again. No tracks were anywhere on my property other than the foot prints mentioned, no dogs, etc. I checked the property next door as well, nothing.
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I’m not really sure anything got to conspiracy level? I think it’s more so the basic mindset of, make your house/property less accessible than your neighbors. I think any logical person wouldn’t come through your paddock gates without asking. Could it have been a curious kid, sure. Could it have been a less than well intended person, sure. I don’t know, but the fact that I came home to my horse acting in such a manner to later then come home to find my gates gone through and foot prints… More than enough reason to add some precautionary measures to keep my animals safe.
But to each their own.
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Lol, I’m not sure who my husband would shoot first, a peacock or me for bringing home a peacock 
I think I’m convinced, no peacocks or geese.
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