Horse thieves still with us

Three Hillsborough horses are taken recently.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO, Times Staff Writer
Published September 1, 2007

Joanne Fraley stoops to pick a snack of weeds for C.J., her pet donkey, whose four-legged pal Sugar, a quarter horse pony, was stolen from the pasture after thieves cut a hole in the barbed wire fence.
	[Melissa Lyttle | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Melissa Lyttle | Times] Sugar is described as a very stocky bay colored mare. Her mane and tail is black and the mane is short in places. She has a blaze and snip on the face.

TAMPA - How do you steal a 500-pound, four-legged animal without anyone noticing?

Very easily, apparently.

Three horses have been stolen from Hillsborough County in the last three months. The one thing the thefts have in common?

No one saw them.

But Joanne Fraley can't get the visions out of her head. Since Sugar disappeared almost two weeks ago, Fraley keeps imagining the worst - that her sweet, stocky quarter horse pony has been sold for slaughter.

"I just never ever heard of someone stealing a horse," she said.

Horse thefts sound improbable, but according to deputies and a national horse theft expert, it's that very perception that enables thieves to strike.

"It's really easy to do," said Debi Metcalfe, founder of Stolen Horse International, based in Shelby, NC. "Because most people don't expect something as big as a horse to be stolen."

Thieves frequently nab horses from open pastures - as in Sugar's case - and even crowded horse shows. But the crime often escapes notice as bystanders assume the person handling the horse is supposed to be there.

Metcalfe, who issues alerts about stolen horses through her Web site, www.netposse.com, said the most reliable nationwide study conducted on horse thefts found that an estimated 40,000 horses are stolen annually.

In the Tampa Bay area, Pinellas County officials said they had no recent reports of stolen horses.

In Pasco County, Sheriff's Sgt. Roger Mills said horse theft is relatively rare there, with fewer than 10 cases per year. More common is horse neglect, or disputes over boarding and care, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Hernando County Sheriff's Office said that to her knowledge, there have been no such incidents in that area.

The motive, Metcalfe said, is almost always profit. Because horse trading regulations vary from state to state, it's easy for stolen animals to show up at horse auctions without the potential buyer ever being the wiser.

And the thieves come from all walks of life. In 10 years of helping people look for horses, Metcalfe said she's seen all sorts of cases, from the drunken kid who decides after partying to jump on a horse and ride it home, to the veterinarian trading in stolen warmbloods, or sport horses.

And she's encountered organized crime rings and boarders who sell horses from their stables, telling owners they died.

Sometimes the horses live, sometimes they are slaughtered for meat.

"It's a modern-day crime," Metcalfe said. "It didn't go out with cowboys. It's thriving because of technology."

Sugar was taken from her pasture, at S 36th Avenue and S 70th Street some time between Sunday, Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. and Monday Aug. 20 at 4 a.m.

The fence holding Sugar and her donkey companion, C.J., had been cut.

She's reddish-brown with a black mane and tail, and she stands 13 to 14 hands tall. She has a white spot on her forehead and spooks easily.

"That," Hillsborough sheriff's Sgt. Wayne New said, "we have no leads on."

But Fraley can't help wonder if Sugar's disappearance is related to a theft that happened weeks earlier at another nearby pasture.

In May, Chester and Cowboy disappeared from 3305 S 54th St. Again, the fence was cut.

Pasco County deputies arrested Julio Lazaro Aguiar, 41, in that May robbery after a neighbor reported seeing horses matching the missing horses' descriptions on Aguiar's Spring Hill property.

Sgt. New said that in three years overseeing the sheriff's agricultural unit, this year's horse thefts were the first he'd seen. "We have cows every now and then, but not that many horses."

The state keeps only a limited accounting of the amount of livestock stolen each year, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement. For the last several years, the state has reported about livestock valuing only about $1-million being stolen annually - and that doesn't differentiate between stolen pigs and horses, for example.

"I would say that's not even close," said Metcalfe. Stolen Horse International gets hundreds of reports of stolen horses every year. "And lately, we've been swamped."

Metcalfe recommends that horse owners take a number of precautions to help keep their horses safe, including both freeze branding, which uses cold instead of heated metal, and installing a microchip in their horses' necks.

Fraley said she'd never thought of putting a microchip in Sugar. She's no show horse, after all. In eight years with the Fraley family, Sugar would only be ridden by Fraley's grandson. Sugar spent most of her days grazing and enjoying the company of Rosie, her longtime horse companion.

Then Rosie got sick and died this summer. Sugar cried and whinnied and acted erratically.

Fraley thought a new friend, a donkey, would help. Now, C.J. the donkey is all she has left.

Anyone with information about Sugar's whereabouts was asked to call HCSO at 813247-8200 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-873-8477.

To keep them safe

A few ways to protect your horse from thieves:

- Identify your horses with microchips and branding- Put signs on property and stalls saying your horses are marked and identifiable- Record identification information with state and national registries.- Keep current photos of your horse, dirty and clean.- Padlock gates and maintain fencing.- Do not put halters and lead ropes by stall doors.- Keep a barking dog nearby- Pay attention to service people on the property.- Lock up your tack and mark it with your driver's license number.

Source: Stolen Horse International, www.netposse.com

[Last modified August 31, 2007, 23:36:40]