A Horse of a day

02/11/2015

While we had a heck of a day the other day. My husband is back on night shift, and since I'm home I usually try to adjust to his sleep schedule. We got up late the other day then got ready to go get some Peat Humus for our garden beds.

As soon as we reached the street we saw two horses leads on in the middle of the road, traffic backed up on both sides. Me being me I jump out to get them, and hope they are friendly enough that I can catch them. I do, call our county and they ask us to keep them in our backyard til they can reach the horse ranch who we all assume is where they came from... they also specify even if they are the horse ranches I can't turn them over to anyone without their permission!

That night we reach the ranch, they aren't theirs. 2 ladies from the ranch do come to look them over and bring hay for them though, sweet ladies! They can't stay at the horse ranch due to coggins, a deadly disease in horses that these horses COULD have. Later after they leave and when its dark outside we get someone knocking on our backdoor; for reference we have a 6 foot privacy fence all the way around our backyard and a padlock on our gate! It is this man that looks wild saying these are his horses. I ask if he has paperwork or coggins on them and he says no, then I tell him that the county will have to give me permission to hand them over, and I have my husband drive him home since he walked here (and so we know where he lives). I gave him the number for the county and told him when they open.

The next day at 8 I call the county. Due to his lack of proof of ownership they tell me they will send out an officer to talk to him and decide if they want to turn them over. I drive to his house to let him know what they said and when they said they would be here. They are late so I call them again and they come about an hour late, talk to us, see the horses than leave to talk to him... telling us we would more than likely have to keep them another night because the horse guy isn't working that day and he has no proof of ownership.

The guy shows up right after animal control leaves for his horses. I tell him they are on their way to talk to him and he calls me a liar than says I'm a horse thief, goes to leave and threatens us... this is a guy that just broke into my backyard the night before and is known around the neighborhood to shoot off guns!

Animal control arrives as he is walking away and he goes up to them and says we are stealing his horses etc. They try to talk some sense in to him, doesn't work! They get on the phone and whoever they talk to tells them to let him take the horses...despite him having NO proof of ownership! These horses also had no vet care in years and were both under weight and had no coggins tests!

I've called the county police twice, the first officer we got was just a jerk. He said the guy did nothing wrong when he jumped my back fence and that if I didn't want people doing that I should have no trespassing signs! He also refused to press charges against the guy from the horse farm who DOES have no trespassing signs, and the guy was in their barn and never knocked on their front door!

The second cop was nicer, and he felt bad since I started crying because I'm really upset that I can't take my dogs outside at night in my fenced in backyard and feel safe with that lunatic around now! He couldn't do anything but was mad about the first cops behavior and told me if the guy is near my house just call him!

Anyway, one heck of a 24 hours! For that day we couldn't let our dogs in our backyard for fear of the horses.. and I had one of them try to run me down =/! The last part of this saga happened yesterday and we just cleaned up the MANY piles of poop an hour ago! Makes good compost!

I can't believe anyone in their right mind would say I'm trying to steal horses when I called animal control, the sheriff, the horse ranch, and I have LESS THAN 1/3 of an acre fenced in! One of my plants is like 1/2 the size it was because of their grazing and my yard had enough poop to fill a wheelbarrow after just 24 hours!

At least my compost pile and red wriggler worms will enjoy the by product: