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RCMP Det. last evening advising that the horses had been discovered in a field, not far from the owners home. The horses (9) were all in good health and did not show any sign of being in distress. The RCMP at Tofield are continuing to make enquiries with regards to the horses disappearance, and of course their subsequent arrival a short distance away. There were certainly some valuable lessons learned from this case.
(a) The person(s) that discovered the horses missing, contacted the local detachment of the RCMP and the local livestock inspector from Livestock Identification Services.(LIS)
(2) The missing/found horse form was completed and faxed directly to LIS in Calgary, so that it could be "fanned" out to the Alberta Livestock Inspectors as well as our neighboring provinces. This was done with the assistance from the local LIS Inspector. These LIS inspectors work jointly with all the local RCMP Detachments in the province and we can't say enough about their expertise and assistance in missing livestock cases.
(3) The Alberta Equine Federations were able to fan out the missing horse information to the Equine Community which resulted in several phone calls from tipsters.
(4) The media involvement both television and radio was also a contributing factor.
(5) Reporting information such as this to the proper resources such as A.E.F. in a timely fashion is always a key element in missing livestock being located.
(6) As always positive identification such as freeze branding and photographs are good preventive measures to deter would be thieves and as I have stated in the past, horse owners should always consider taking these valuable steps.
The RCMP will continue to investigate this matter .
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