Oh life... you fickle beast OR The Story with a Happy Ending

To say the last two and half months of my life have been a whirlwind of emotions would be a complete understatement. Moving to a new barn, getting settled in, the burglary, the hellish winter we've been having, financially trying to rebound from losing everything, the holidays. For my anxious, neurotic brain it's been, at times, nearly more than I can bear. I am lucky to be surrounded by such amazing friends and family, and of course you guys. What would I do without my horse blog friends!?!



Not to sound completely sappy, but I am a true believer of you get back what you put out into the world. I try to be a kind, compassionate, generous person. I would do anything for my friends and family and I am an idealist at heart. When our farm was robbed back in November the police officer who took our report was extremely doubtful that we would recover anything, furthermore, she told us they would like not find the people responsible for the burglary. They did not dust for fingerprints as lots and lots of contractors had been in and out of the barn over the first month we had been there, and they had no information to go on as far as suspects were concerned. The officer called me a month or so ago to tell me that the case had been handed over to a detective and that they would be handling things from there. I provided them with an itemized list of everything, but again, we had lost hope. Between the fundraiser and the donations of tack we received we started to piece together our things and were able to start riding again. I had decided I would keep my 1/3 of the money after buying a new bridle etc to put toward a new saddle at the beginning of March.

Monday afternoon the detective handling the case called me at work (I assumed he was just calling to inform me that he had taken over the case). He explained that he thought a local tack shop may have our gear and asked if he could send me some photos. He started rattling off the names of the saddles and I got goosebumps all over my body. I nearly cried. He explained that there were three saddles and "some other gear" that all came in together. He asked if I would confirm by email if it was our stuff and then he'd set up a time for all of us to meet. I could hardly call Emily fast enough. We were both just bursting with anticipation.

Yesterday, we had an intense ice storm that shut down most of Chester County (where we keep our horses). The detective called me in the morning to say that shop likely didn't have any power and that we might not be able to meet today. All the cell phone lines/towers were covered in ice so neither of us had any reception at the barn. We got the barn (which also had no power and no water) and began to assess what we could do in order to keep the horses happy and hydrated! They all have Nelson waterers in their stalls but without power they wouldn't refill. We could leave the horses out but several of them have nicks and cuts that needed wrapping and should stay inside overnight, plus the hills were incredibly icy and we had no idea if there were downed trees along the fence lines that we couldn't get to by car.

Overnight snow and freezing rain had covered everything with a layer of ice, trees were snapping under the weight.

Down in Riley's field collecting water for 8 horses. This stream is fed by a natural spring that almost never freezes.

The roads were treacherous!

All the white on the road is ice shards.

After getting the horses all set up to come in for the night, we finally got one bar of reception and I had Emily send the detective a text (I didn't want him to think we had forgotten but I was certain we wouldn't be meeting up that day). He told us to meet him at a local tack shop TEN MINUTES away. We made the trek over and to our surprise it was tack shop nearly next door to our old boarding facility (the animal rescue place)! We were met by the detective and the owners of the shop who explained what happened. A man had shown up mid-January and offered our stuff for sale (he claimed it was taking up space in his grandmother's basement) and the owner explained that she only takes things on consignment. The guy wasn't interested in that, so the owner asked him what he wanted for all of it (she suspected it was stolen and wanted to be able to obtain it if she had the cash). He told her a crazy low price and she wrote him a check (smart woman), he asked where the closest bank was and immediately cashed the check. They were able to fingerprint him at the bank, they have him on camera and they have his name. According to the detective he has priors and may even be on parole. We'll have to make an appearance in court, but he will definitely be charged and will serve time. *I'm being slightly vague about the details because I don't want to jeopardize the case. I offered to pay the woman the amount she bought our things for, which she graciously accepted (she mentioned that if the guy had asked for a lot of money she would not have been ale to buy our stuff from him). We had to go through each piece of tack with our original list with the officer to see what we had recovered. The only thing of Riley's I got back was his saddle. No bridle, breastplate, girth or thinline pad. Emily recovered her two saddles and one bridle and a breastplate. There's a lot still missing (and we have a possible lead at another tack shop he stopped at before this one) so once power is restored to that area I'm going to make an inquiry. Everything was pretty beat up, the shop owner said he just kind of threw everything on the ground and the flaps were all bent, but, I have my &^%$*%$$@$!% saddle back!!!!!!!

Excuse my I've-been-at-the-barn-all-day-pajama-look!!!!

Thankfully, I think Emily and I have enough money raised from the fundraiser to supplement everything else we lost. We could not have done this without the support of our friends and family, and the wonderful blog world. Thank you so much for always being there for us.

**We made the decision to publicly announce this, but not on Facebook etc. Strangely, some people in the horse community were not as kind to us when our stuff was stolen and we want to leave all of this behind us (not to mention we don't want to do something to ruin the case) and move on with positivity for 2014. So many thank you cards to send out this week! We're planning on doing something special for the shop owner too!!!!