Lede story

It seems we have a major lead (or a lede, as we say in newspaper land) on who has been stealing from our farm.

After the saddles vanished, I made some calls to local tack stores and gave them descriptions of the saddles and to call me if any saddles fitting those descriptions came in for consignment. I thought it was a long shot, but couldn't hurt.

That day, I get a call from one of the owners.

He immediately gave me a name of a woman. He outright called her a thief and that he would be highly, highly suspicious of her.

Her name didn't ring a bell with me, but I went ahead and passed her name on to our Barn Owner.

Imagine my surprise when my BO emailed me back and said, "Actually, she has recently boarded with us."

!!!!!!

I knew it! I knew it was someone who knew the farm, knew our schedules and was familiar with other details. In fact she had boarded with us just in August! I didn't know her, as she and her husband didn't stay too long. But they do have an OTTB - and I remembered the horse.

So our BO called around to other local farms and time and time again this woman's name came up. Seems things go missing wherever she goes. When she left our farm, she took our BO's expensive bit and a few others things (which she did end up getting back after calling this woman out on it).

It seems last year she was caught stealing a Devoucoux saddle. Charges were never pressed because the real Devoucoux saddle owner just wanted her saddle back, and said she wouldn't press charges if the saddle was returned.

Also last year, our BO got a call from Thief Woman saying she was looking for an aluminum gooseneck trailer. Intrestingly enough, a gooseneck trailer was later stolen from a farm about 3 miles from us. It was finally recovered at a race horse training facility. And what a coincidence - Thief Woman's HUSBAND is associated with this race horse training facility. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

The cops have been called. And other measures have been made to make sure our stuff is not messed with again.

I'm not going to give this woman's name on this blog (don't want any libel suits against me, haha), but if you live in this area and want to know her name, I will happily give it to you. Email me at finalchapter.karen@gmail.com

Honestly this whole thing has pissed me off. Even though I have been lucky and my stuff has not been stolen, we all feel very violated. The farm is like a sanctuary to us. And now we all feel paranoid and pissed off. And NONE of us out there are rich. We are not one of the fancy foo-foo rich people farms. We cannot afford to just replace a saddle. Which annoys me even more. We all work so hard and sacrifice so much and this cow comes in and just takes what she wants.

Ok, rant over. Will have a post about Hampton soon! :)