Good Guinness Missing

[cloudyandcallie]

[QUOTE=vineyridge;3936854]
And this is why either microchipping or tattooing/branding is so very important. Any paper documents can be reused or forged, and when you are talking about animals as expensive as GG should have been, there is a lot of incentive for bad things to happen. The cross country distance makes the scam/fraud even harder to track back and prosecute.[/QUOTE]

Exactly, it’s inexpensive, and you don’t need to tell everyone about it since people could remove the chip if they steal your horse. Chip your horses, dogs and cats.

I read the story on HSS and wondered why it wasn’t on coth, since it’s obvious that people should be looking for the horse everywhere. Without a lip tattoo or microchip or identifying scar, which you have a picture of, or an european brand with part of the life #, it’s hard to find and ID a missing or stolen horse.

However, if this horse was accidentally delivered to the wrong person “how come” he/she didn’t tell? Did he/she keep Guinness?
But then first you have to believe that the right horse was loaded on the transport. After all the things that went on years ago in Chicago and Fla with ins. fraud, I’d want to know if the right horse was loaded, and if so, who either accidentally or deliberately removed him before he arrived at his destination.

I hope the horse is alive and in the USA. Getting him back from Mexico would involve a lot of expense and even danger. First thing is to find out if someone else had another horse on that transport that is the horse now posing as Guinness and get all those records. That person got the real Guinness. But if there wasn’t another horse on the transport, then either the “wrong” horse left as Guinness or someone trailering him stole him and made the substitution.

[thizzelledance]

@Mardi;3937225

just trying to follow…

who is Patrick Seaton in this story ? He’s not the owner I take it, as the story says “owner of Good Guinness, a prominent attorney, has called the FBI…”

Patrick is the trainer who rode the horse.

Here’s a link to his website where there’s an ad for GG

http://www.patrickseaton.com/sales.shtml

[luvs2ridewbs]

who knows, maybe someone bought a c/a jumper sight unseen and they accidently ended up with GG. OR more realistically, the horse was stolen and is now long gone.

[Molly99]

[QUOTE=S A McKee;3937299]
The horse showed last in 2008 on 8/27. According to the time frame in the OP the horse was shipped to NY almost shortly after that show.
Good Guinness next appears in Florida on 1/14/09. So there was a significant gap between the last 2008 date and his/whoever next show ring appearance.

So I’m not sure that your argument that ‘someone is paying to lease him’ covers much of the time frame from 8/27 to the present. Looks like the horse was unemployed for four months out of the six months in question.[/QUOTE]
See to, not showing that time of year isn’t a red flag. The fall in the NE is mostly year end shows at the level Frank would be showing. And then nothing until you get to Florida, again not surprising. We have plenty of horses that do no shows from the end of August until they ship to Florida for the winter months and sale horses are less likely to be shown. At the show, yes, but showing, not necessarily.

I was thinking of a lease being the reason he is being shown now, not that the horse was leased the entire time.

[Calhoun]

My cynical side crawling out . . . how much was this horse worth in Sept 2008? Insurance money? I’m having a hard time getting my head around someone not checking in on their horse for that length of time. Also, your horse has ability to win “many Grand Prixs” (according to Patrick Seaton’s website) and suddenly he’s demoted to children’s jumper? It does not add up with the facts presented.

I’m confused, why wouldn’t the owner know the horse was being leased?

[caffeinated]

@Calhoun;3937459

I’m having a hard time getting my head around someone not checking in on their horse for that length of time. Also, your horse has ability to win “many Grand Prixs” (according to Patrick Seaton’s website) and suddenly he’s demoted to children’s jumper? It does not add up with the facts presented.

I don’t know, maybe I’m crazy, but I can see this happening pretty easily.

People lease horses out or send them places all the time without checking on them constantly… I can see a bigger trainer sending a horse to another bigger trainer and assuming everything is fine until the horse isn’t selling after 5-6 months.

And because there was a little break in the showing action, the “demotion” wasn’t necessarily an alarm bell right away.

On the flip side, there’s so many possibilities here that the mind boggles. Could be shady dealings on any of the individuals’ parts… or an innocent shipping mistake… or a nefarious shipper out to take advantage of everybody else… or Mexicans. Where’s Jessica Fletcher when you need her?

[Calhoun]

I agree get Jessica Fletcher or Jack Bauer - LOL

[lonewolf]

For anyone who’s interested, I found a video of the horse on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuZrbkAqdnM

[Dun_Ciarain]

In this age of digital photography, I would assume that when a valuable horse is shipped across country and neither the owner nor the agent/trainer/other person familiar with the horse is available to accept delivery of the horse that:

1. Photos of the horse being shipped are sent ahead to the final destination.

2. That the receipient of the horse sends photos back to the point of origination to verify the horse is the correct one.

Since there was no chip and no brand, are color and size the only identifiers?

“I’m shipping you a very expensive horse to sell, it is brown.” Six months later I check with you and the horse I sent you isn’t the horse you have??? No one questioned the diminished abilities of the horse they received? Since apparently no one can verify if the correct horse was ever received and it has been six months since the horse was supposedly shipped…it will be very hard to prove what happened.

Photos of Good Guinness competing:

http://www.sheriscottphotography.com/galleries/summer_festival_2008_d-g/index.htm

The six month time frame to find out your horse is missing really bothers me.

“Well, now we are on day 3 after the discovery, the police have been notified and the owner of Good Guinness, a prominent attorney, has called the FBI…this is huge…”

I can’t image any prominent attorney who would let an expensive horse to be shipped across the country to be sold without someone accepting custody/responsibility for horse at the destination.

Instead of “this is huge”, I would say “this is suspicious” that it took six months to find out that they have the wrong horse.

[nycjumper]

Umm… people ship horses to trainers all the time. I highly doubt that someone was thinking this would happen. And from the surface, it sounds like the horses were similar(esque) in looks. So even if they had a pic of a bay horse getting off the trailer, would that necessarily have changed things?

If horse is coming off GPs in CA, ships cross-country, I would assume there was some downtime while they prepped him for FL and it wouldn’t have necessarily raised any alarm bells, esp being in a BNT barn.

Again - for a lot of people - this isn’t about their precious Dobbin being sent away. They are pros. How much do you think they are checking in regularly, esp if the plan was to get the horse ready for GPs at WEF (which are a step up and would probably have required some legging up)?

[Dun_Ciarain]

[QUOTE=Calhoun;3937459]
My cynical side crawling out . . . how much was this horse worth in Sept 2008? Insurance money? I’m having a hard time getting my head around someone not checking in on their horse for that length of time. Also, your horse has ability to win “many Grand Prixs” (according to Patrick Seaton’s website) and suddenly he’s demoted to children’s jumper? It does not add up with the facts presented.

I’m confused, why wouldn’t the owner know the horse was being leased?[/QUOTE]

I agree, it may be perfectly innocent, but these types of things seem to happen during recessions (quick drops in the horse market coincide with recessions) or when something else is up. Some things just sound suspicious, like “I left my child with a babysitter a month ago and the babysitter disappeared, I guess it is time to notify the police…”.

It is hard to believe the the destiantion did not verify that the horse they signed for was the correct one. The first thing I would look at is the chain of custody of the horse. I assume that the horse was signed for by the shipper, agent and the receipient.

[eqrider1234]

Yeah the first thing i thought of when i read this was of what when on in florida and chicago with the horse killing for insurance money… although i wasnt alive i did read the book and this does sound like it could be something similar, but I think it would have been easier for them to kill the horse rather than find another horse that looks like it, wait six months and then freak out and get everyone involved… and idk does insurance pay for missing horses? or just dead ones?

[Dun_Ciarain]

[QUOTE=nycjumper;3937508]
Umm… people ship horses to trainers all the time. I highly doubt that someone was thinking this would happen. And from the surface, it sounds like the horses were similar(esque) in looks. So even if they had a pic of a bay horse getting off the trailer, would that necessarily have changed things?

If horse is coming off GPs in CA, ships cross-country, I would assume there was some downtime while they prepped him for FL and it wouldn’t have necessarily raised any alarm bells, esp being in a BNT barn.

Again - for a lot of people - this isn’t about their precious Dobbin being sent away. They are pros. How much do you think they are checking in regularly, esp if the plan was to get the horse ready for GPs at WEF (which are a step up and would probably have required some legging up)?[/QUOTE]

You’re right, this isn’t about Dobbin, it’s about a lot of money. Professional people document such transactions since they are liable if something goes wrong.

[horsegurl]

[edit]

And for all the comments–The horses are so similar looking, I don’t think Maddens could possibly have known the horse arriving wasn’t Guinness. There’s gotta be a place to see the flyer. I can’t find it on Patrick’s website (brilliant!). It’s on Facebook on various friends profiles.

[edit]

Funny enough, sometimes these stories have a way of ending happily months and months later. Fingers crossed for Guinness.

[Roulett]

email blast

I just got the email blast on missing GP horse but the photo’s of the imposter are
very small – I have lifted them off my original emails from a few days ago so
you can see them better and possibly ID imposted horse. I hope this works, I’m
not real familiar with this photobucket program.

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo27/russianjumper86/IMG_0445.jpg

http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/oo27/russianjumper86/wrong.jpg

[caffeinated]

and a couple photos on Anne Gittin’s site… (this would be whichever horse is competing under the name… from WEF)…

Not that it matters, or one could tell from those photos… I’m just a crazy webstalker.

And on the USEF site on all the WEF entries, underneath it says something about the owner not being active- so did this horse actually compete (whoever he is) or was he disqualified after?

[gwenrowdy]

Missing Grand Prix jumper

Sorry if this has already been posted somewhere; this is a crosspost from the Friends of TB Friends yahoo group. The “Joe” she’s referring to is Joe of TB Friends, who rescues many TBs. What a nightmare!

To those of you ALL Over the country. Please copy and paste this and email to
all–especially those that frequent feed lots, Mexican type rodeo things, etc.

Good Guinness is a 12 yr, 17h ISH (warmblood), Black, with small star. He
belongs to Patrick Seaton, and was shipped (here’s the scary part)last September
(!) from L.A. to NY to Beezie Madden’s barn. He never arrived.

The story goes roughly like this: Patrick Seaton was called by the Madden’s,
that Guinness just wasn’t performing, and so he traveled east to see the horse.
When he got there, voila! It was not his horse Guinness, who had arrived at the
barn, it was some other black horse. Patrick, the trainer, just discovered this
in the past few days.

If you would please forward this info to every horse person you know. Who knows
where Guinness is? Maybe he’s at Joe’s? Who knows. Hopefully not in a Mexican
Rodeo somewhere, or …worse. I posted the flyer in the “photos” section of
this website. please help.

Thanks
Kylee

[nycjumper]

Thanks for the clarification. I’m quite sure there was documentation. It appears from the original post is that the horses were similar enough in height, color, marking that GG’s coggins, etc could be used. My point is that people seem to be blaming original rider for not checking in sooner and quite frankly, I’m not sure why he would if he was notified horse arrived safely & was on track to show at WEF in Jan.

There appears to be a lot of questions going around

1. If Ali has been at WEF for months - did he not check in & notice the horse was different?
2. The missing teeth/scars on legs prob would have raised an alarm bell - that seems strange that no one asked about that
3. A GP horse showing in C/A Jumpers??

Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[Molly99]

Caffeinated - that just means the owner is not a USEF member. Which according to a search on USEF that owner is not a 2009 member.

[SuperSTB]

I sold a horse that was shipped to a ranch that was only 5 hrs away. Supposed to be a quick trip. The horse did go missing for a couple days… still don’t know wtf happened.

Anyway- precautions we took: photo of horse loading on trailer, and photo of truck trailer that picked up horse. I also jotted plates of truck AND trailer. Also got the driver’s name and cell phone number (incase he was brokered out by hauling co). Called the new owner once the horse was loaded and off.

The new owner called me after the arrival date was missed. I forwarded on all the info include pics and she contacted the shipping company. It’s not uncommon for shippers to contract with other shippers.

I don’t take much stock in microchipping but I do with branding and tattoos! Microchipping is at the whim of the chip design matching scanner capabilities. But my crew is tattoo’d so I don’t need to chip.