Yes, many times. The local sheriff's office seems to think that I own every horse in a 10 mile radius. I have been called to get horses off of the highway or out of the road many times. They seem to think nothing of calling me at 3 am if there is a loose horse in the county.I once got a BIG palomino gelding off of a main road, took him home and out him in the pasture until I could locate the owner. The owner came after him and didn't even bring anything to lead him with. I took the horse home for him and he asked me to sell him a halter and lead. He had been leading him by his mane if he needed to lead him, he didn't own a halter or a lead.
I have had as many as 15 horses in my pasture at one time trying to locate who owned them. It absolutely amazes me how many times the owners don't even notice they are missing.
A couple of years ago, a solid black pony was spotted wandering on a very busy road near our place at 3 a.m. The police were called, someone on the police force knew someone with a horse trailer, so she was called at that ungodly hour. She came, the pony was collected, and she took him home. Although she had never seen the pony before, she had an idea who he might belong to, so she made a phone call after the sun was up. Sure enough, the pony belonged to a friend of mine. This was the second strange call she'd had that morning! The first was the people who had come in to feed her horses. When they arrived, they found all the gates to the paddocks open, and all the stall doors in one of the barns were open as well. Obviously, someone had been messing around. (We think the reason the other barn was left alone was because it had no windows, and the hoodlums couldn't find the lightswitch.) All of the horses were still there, except this pony, and his absence wasn't noticed in the confusion. He had only been there about a week, I think maybe a sort of homing instinct may be the reason that he wandered off alone rather than stick with the other horses. He was about a half-mile away when found. His story has a good ending, a horse belonging to another friend was not so lucky. Someone cut the wires of the electric fence surrounding one of this guy's pastures, and the horses got out. About 5 a.m, a woman was driving to work on a road about a mile from his place, and hit one of the horses. The horse was killed, and the lady seriously injured. She has recovered, and says she never saw the horse. While I find it hard to believe that one could not see a 15-hand, varnish roan app, I can believe that it might not "register" quickly enough for a person to manage to avoid hitting it, especially in the pre-dawn hours.
I know, being called in to chase someone elses' horses around at all hours can be annoying, but you may be saving lives in the process. I got drafted into a foot pursuit of three escaped ponies myself a couple of years ago. Even though I told my son what I was doing, when he saw me leaving with the policeman, he thought I was being arrested!
(He never could say what he thought I might have done!) The ponies were returned home without anyone or anything getting damaged (barring the gate they had trashed to get out,) but I was reminded how very little unhorsey people know about handling them. Because I knew how to think like a horse, I was at all the right places to head off further attempts to escape, without me, that recovery would have taken a lot longer, and someone might well have gotten hurt.
