Lost or stolen horse?

[Angela_Freda]

I follow Netposse on Facebook, and it’s scary how many horses go missing, never to be seen again.

What I find curious though is how one determines that the horse simply got loose, vs was stolen. How do you actually know? Especially when the horse turns up not far away, loose?

[StormyDay]

I think if you find the horse loose somewhere it just got out.

90% of the missing horses you see on there or other places have extenuating circumstances. The Leaser never returned the horse is a BIG one. The person paid half the cost of the horse, and then dropped off the face of the earth. Family feud, horse is sold/given away in spite. Crazy boarding barn does something with the horse.

It’s very rare that a horse is truly stolen by someone with no real leads as to why. Which is why when it happens, we hear so much about it.

[Foxglove]

Only ever heard of one local horse stealing —pasture along the rural road with a gate ON the road (fastened but no lock). Horses pastured with halters on (another bad idea, I think) Only 7 miles from our local horse auction (not New Holland --an Amish sale barn).

Someone pulled in a trailer, loaded the horses and took them to the auction.

The owner, a teenager and her boyfriend, suspected the destination and went to the auction where they found the horses and had the thieves arrested. Both sets of parents were lawyers, one quite prominent in politics and civic organizations. I doubt the perps did jail time (don’t know for sure), but do know they were taken to court . . .probably pled out.

This was all 20 years ago …

[trubandloki]

@Angela_Freda

What I find curious though is how one determines that the horse simply got loose, vs was stolen.

I think this is similar to the question of ‘how do you know it was abused’ when people proclaim that Dobbin must have been abused in the past.

It sounds better to say that someone must have stolen your horse than to say that your fence sucks (or you left the gate open) and Dobbin got out again.