by Tom Brennan

Created on: June 10, 2009

My horse steals ! Maybe we can get into a support group. It all began when I bought him. "Chance" is a Mustang-Quarterhorse crossbreed. He has the letter "C" at the top of his broad white blaze, you can see him a long ways off, and that's good because he'll steal your heart (and your wallet). The day we became compadres, the first thing I noticed was what seemed to be a mischievous "grin" (okay, horses don't grin, but that's what it looked like). He was a little runt of a 1 1/2 year old and we hit it off from the minute we set eyes on each other. Papers signed, he got moved to his new temporary home, a boarding ranch. The new horse owner had begun a new way of life (slavery). "Chance" was supposed to get his grain ration twice a day, my first job as a horse owner. One morning I got the scare of my life. I knew from watching cowboy movies when I was a kid that horses slept standing up, ready to saddle and ride off to chase bandits, rustlers, etc. I had just given 'Chance" his very large pan of expensive grain when he nibbled a bit and walked off. Then he got down on his knees, front to back and lay down on his side. I watched in horror as my horse "died" right in front of me. My breathing stopped, my stomach went cold, and my dreams took the next stage out of Dodge as I watched something that just wasn't supposed to happen (at least it didn't happen to Gene, Roy or Hoppy). For the longest time,I watched, searching for breathing, twitching, anything that would give me hope. And then it happened. 'Chance" rose up, front to back, stretched, gave me a lesson in horse flatulence, and walked over to resume eating his grain. Now I could breathe again, so horses do really sleep lying down. Why didn't somebody tell me ? Well, that was just the start of the day's lessons. After he polished off the grain, he slowly walked up to me and snatched my brand new, clean and carefully shaped straw cowboy hat off my head and scurried away to a corner to begin shaking it up and down and then biting a large piece of it off before I could get it away from him. Not only did he scare the jeans off me, he just stole my hat. Better keep a sharp eye on that one.

We moved to another boarding ranch and 'Chance"continued to scare and amaze me. He never though he got enough to eat, no matter how many tons of grain he got. One day I was talking on my cell phone, I finished the conversation and put it in its holster. Immediately, 'Chance" grabbed it and scurried off, out of reach, and began to chew on it. I climbed the fence and tried to gently ply it out of his mouth before anything went wrong. Somehow it came loose without damage to the phone, the horse, or my hand. About twenty minutes later a squad car, assigned to the County Animal Control officer pulled up to the barn. I stared in amazement at the officers, and then the horse. He turned me in for cruelty ! Voice quivering, I asked who had called them, what did they sound like (Mr. Ed ?).It turns out that another boarder had called on a different complaint. But "Chance" still had that "grin" on his face (gotcha).

It turns out that if you put down a can of Pepsi,"Chance" would pick it up and drink it all down, beer too. Coffee cups would disappear. One day a visiting vet put her bag down for a minute and 'Chance" walked up behind her, swiped the bag and began to trot off. The alleged perp was apprehended in the act. He also will steal wallets.

Yep, I've got a horse-thief on my hands. Guilty as charged of stealing my heart (and a lot of other things).

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