I honestly wonder how often this used to happen especially before DNA and was just never caught. You get a couple of younger plain bays, have them out in the pasture, at some point you accidentally mess up about who is who and by the time they get to racing age they are tattooed as each other.
Yes, but there is no excuse for that kind of sloppiness. Most people are more careful than that, as they should be.
This guy ran two horses in the same race, wearing the each other’s saddle cloths. No excuse for that either.
Total tangent, but I wonder how many horses aren’t who their pedigrees say they are overall (thoroughbreds and other breeds). I mean, for centuries we had to rely on people being honest when large sums of money were at stake. Ha!
Sometimes its their color that finds them out, appaloosa patterns on purebred Quarter Horses, oops.
Don’t forget about the ASB infusion into the Morgan breed pre-dna. And there is an old story about an ASB stud who was a shy breeder, and had a “stand in” who, fortunately, was of very similar bloodlines. Ah- and Merry Go Boy, the Tennessee Walking Horse who allegedly sired a ton of foals- but there were a couple of other black TWH studs on that farm, as well, so MGB might not have had to do all of the work…
There was a mix-up that happened maybe a decade ago when two stallions were being shipped to two different countries to stand at stud. One was a very accomplished horse shuttling to Australia. The other was a not very good horse on its way to Russia. Somehow they got mixed up in transit. The so-so stallion ended up doing a season at stud in Australia, while the very valuable horse went to Russia.
The problem was discovered when the shuttle stallion came home to KY and his regular groom immediately said, “That’s not my horse.” Aside from all the covers that were wrong, I seem to recall there were issues getting the Russian owner to give up what he now realized was a much more valuable stallion than he thought he had.
Just look at the permanent (in the pedigree records anyway) confusion with Bend Or being most likely Tadcaster —as confirmed in 2012ish by DNA studies. Many people’s OTTB’s are not who they think they are further back in the pedigree!
My old Amish friend took a 16 h-ish dark bay standardbred gelding to a local sale. When he came back from getting a hip number, he couldn’t figure out which 16h-ish dark bay standardbred gelding was his. He picked one. It wasn’t his. Someone else put a number on his horse.
The guy who owned the horse he sold threw a flag & got the money from that sale. Not sure my friend ever did get paid for his horse.
Must have been a newer horse to him? We have Standardbreds, so I can understand some of them look quite a bit alike, but I can’t understand not being able to tell which one is yours after a couple of weeks.
This guy was a bit special and he hadn’t had the horse the long. Just go with it.
