Thinking back 20-plus years to a show when a bunch of saddles were swiped. Ugh.
Are mass heists ongoing? What becomes of the goods – exported? Do they turn up on auction sites?
How do you protect your tack room?
I live remotely, and have English tack that nobody around here would want, and that anyone who knows anything about the current trends and fashions in tack would bother to steal, because it has little value to sell. It suits me and I like it, and that’s all I care about. I lost a western saddle once about 30 years ago, it also had little value, but I guess someone wanted it. It was my lead pony saddle at the track and I had no tackroom to lock it up in. I still miss that saddle, and have no idea who took it or why. But I still keep an eye open for it… There was a little bit of engraving on one side of it that would still be recognisable. If I ever found it, the chit would have to hit the fan.
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tack was stolen, filed police report, they said most likely the stuff was taken directly to an auction…nothing was ever recovered
Our saddles were Stamped with farm name, one was irreplaceable western saddle from the 1950s with real silver conchos, we were fortunate to have had taken it to our saddle shop a month before to have Randy check it out so when we filed the insurance claim for loss we had a very good evaluation to hand them.
Later had a horse trailer stolen, never recovered
There are different levels of theft.
There is in Barn theft usually of smaller things. And then there are big saddle thefts which are either inside jobs or opportunistic like at shows or trail rides.
I feel like the internet could make stealing and selling small things much easier. You could post on a FB sales group on the other side of the country under another name and noone would ever make the connection.
I feel though that there’s less random theft just because tack resale is a specialized market and most of the local meth heads no longer have a true rural background to know how to navigate that.
But I would be very careful at a show.
Our farm is 7 miles from a weekly held horse/tack auction. Years ago “someone” swiped a bunch of saddles from the Handicapped Riding Program --the saddles showed up at the auction the next time it was held (every Friday). The thief was a neighbor of mine --young teenage girl of limited mental capacity who had been a participant at the handicapped riding program through her school. She got her older boyfriend to drive her to the stable at night, and stole the saddles. I recall she kept one --and was found with it at her house. All the saddles were recovered.
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I boarded at a big show barn in a fairly rural area where someone drove in during the middle of the night, and drove out with about 20 high end saddles. They clearly knew what they were looking for–left behind all the bridles and the two or three saddles that were not an expensive French brand.
Police came hours later and dusted for prints, etc.
AFAIK, no one ever found those saddles. I had an ebay alert for years for saddles similar to mine that was swiped.
This was about 10 years ago. Stealing large numbers of expensive saddle seems like an extremely easy crime. But I never did understand how someone could easily sell such a large quantity of expensive used tack without attracting attention. I’ve always wondered where those saddles ended up!
15ish years ago there was a rash of tack room break-ins/thefts in my local area. Some of the tack was recovered and some of it was not - the guy had it all in a storage unit and was trying to sell it, along with other stolen stuff like electronics and construction equipment. Police set up a sting with an undercover officer claiming to want to buy items. One of the stolen saddles was formerly mine - I had sold it, that person had then sold it again, and it was stolen from that third person - and was recovered.
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Yes.
This was almost 50 years ago, when both my sister and I were at college.
We had a 4 horse barn with 2 horses, both in their late teens. My mother was bedridden, dying of cancer.
At the IBM Research lab (where my father worked for many decades, and I was working for the summer) there was a young couple looking for someone to share-board their two horses. I contacted them to see if they were interested in a place to keep their horses, with no fee, in return for feeding, mucking, and supervising our two. They were, and it worked out very well. They were conscientious and reliable.
One day they noticed that my saddle was missing from the tack room, but they were not sure how long it had been gone. They asked everyone, who had been to the barn, when they had last seen the saddle. One of the people they asked was a teenager from Boston who had been visiting them for the weekend, and had come to the barn with them. She insisted she had not seen the saddle.
But about a week later a big package arrived in the mail. There was no return address, but it was postmarked Boston. The saddle was inside it.
I still have the saddle (a Passier “All Purpose”) but it needs some minor (re-stitching) repairs.
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This is … bonkers.
Where I used to keep my horses in England, on the outskirts of London, we had regular problems with tack thefts–it would all get spirited away down to the South Coast and across to Europe to sell, apparently. (Horses too, but that’s another story.) Even blankets would disappear from horses out in the fields.
Everything was locked up. Everything was insured. The barn owner had a terrifying Doberman. We marked everything. Saddles had your postcode stamped on them by the police, blankets had your horse’s freeze brand (everything was freeze branded because of the theft problem) painted on them in foot-high letters–which was painful to do if you’d just bought a nice new blanket!
And still, stuff disappeared, very professionally, overnight, usually. They’d come and hit every tack room on the yard and make off with every saddle they could lay their hands on.
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About 30 years ago the tack room at the barn I was boarding at got cleaned out. I had a custom dressage saddle that I would have paid the thieves to get back!
As far as I know, none of the saddles were ever recovered. My insurance paid me, but I sure wanted that saddle back!
Just recently a barn near ours had one of their tack rooms practically cleaned out. Apparently it had happened to this barn years before under different owners. I heard that it’s one of the locations on the farm that the cameras can’t capture. Sure sounds like an inside job of someone who’s been there a few times.It was during -15 degree weather in the middle of the night.
I sure hope some of it gets recovered.
@Lunabear1988 I believe you’re in my area and yes, there have been a rash of thefts lately in the Puget Sound area. I keep my stuff under lock and key and seriously doubt anyone would want my tack but can’t be too careful. Lots of break-ins at trail heads too.
I’m in Colorado. But I think it’s becoming a problem all over the country. We have had people breaking windows in the middle of the day at a few barns around here to get to the purses. It’s shocking and awful.
Oh, no. The barn is the only place where I leave keys and handbag in the car. It feels so … luxurious? … to do that.
Such a violation. Our sanctuary for many and now we are needing to hide our purses and keep everything locked down.
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Yes, years ago at our home barn that only my family used - no guests or boarders. The thieves broke down our tack room door and cleared everything out, including many items of sentimental value. Nothing was ever recovered. We received an insurance check that, although we were able to purchase new tack and gear, never quite replaced what was lost.
We have no idea who did it. Although distant, our barn was visible from a major road and there was a little used backroad that edged our property.
This breaks my heart.
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I think I’ve told this story on here before, but five or so years ago, I had my high-ish end jump saddle in the back seat of my truck - its very unique in that the brown color of the flaps is different than the brown color of the seat. I parked downtown in a major city, and my window was smashed out and the saddle was stolen. I posted all over facebook about it when it happened, filed the police report, etc.
Nothing for months…
Then, I have a riding buddy who lives probably 50 miles away and was an EMT at the time, she was driving the ambulance around on a slow day and her partner suggested they stop in a random pawn shop they happened to by driving by. She walked in and saw my saddle sitting there! She took a picture and sent to a different friend saying “look at this unique saddle - its $200, should i buy it??” Thankfully, that other friend remembered my facebook post and told her to call me immediately bc its probably mine! She did and I rushed over there (30 miles away) and sure enough, my tell tale right - leaning butt cheek marks and everything! Crazy serendipity!!!
I called the cops immediately and told the pawn shop owner it was mine and was stolen. When the police came, they told me I had a two options: 1. pay the pawn shop owner exactly what he paid for it ($150) and I could have it right then (I told the guy he was leaving a lot of money on the table considering even used versions of this saddle model were going for $2500+ at the time), OR 2. I could submit the thing for evidence to the police department and it would sit in some warehouse for months or years waiting to be processed, getting dirty and damaged in the process.
I chose option 1 and happily left with my saddle. The cops took down the name of the guy who sold it to the pawn shop, but I never heard what, if anything, ever happened from a criminal case perspective past that (probably nothing…)
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Tile trackers between the tree and the panel, replace as needed.
Track the saddle down yourself, tell the sheriff where it is.
I keep my good tack inside at my office or at home. However, I did have a seller put a tracker on a special saddle and another in the packing crate for the trip with the shipper. I watched it’s progress from MA to Los Angeles so it worked for me.
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