Helping to prevent horse thefts

Horse thefts do unfortunately happen but there are things that the everyday owner can do to deter the thieves.

Firstly, ensure that your horse is freezemarked or microchiped. Is easy to arrange and your horse details are put onto a central computer. Most companies will offer discount on group bookings. So if you?ve got a group of friends that need their horses doing its worth organizing a day and may well turn out to be more cost effective.

It?s worth taking a lot of good quality photographs of your horse for identification purposes. Make sure you?ve got several at different times of the year. Just think how different your horse looks in the summer to the winter. Keep them in a safe place. Keep all your documents to hand, your vaccination forms and your passport both of these have all your horse markings detailed on them. It helps the police with identification.

If you keep your horse at grass look at the gates are they secure, many people padlock one side but lots of gates can be picked up off their hinges by just putting another chain and padlock at that end as well it may deter the chance theft.

Unfortunately it is impossible to make premises completely secure, but ILPH Field Officer Jacko Jackson suggests some simple measures which can improve security for your horse.

Look at where your horse lives. Examine the boundary - is it secure with solid fences and locked gates? Are there other owners in the vicinity - to create a Horse Watch Group? Can you carry out or improve on any of the above? At night can the horse be stabled? - the nearer to home the better.

If you have stables, for fire reasons it is not feasible to lock your horse in, so we must look at the perimeter. Lights, activated by passive infra-red sensors are a good investment. CCTV is becoming more and more cost effective. If your stables are close to home they can be monitored from the house, or you could install an old LP video recorder at the stables, set to run during the night. This will show you who has been into the yard overnight. This can be achieved for under ?200.

If electricity is a problem, go to a car breakers and find an old battery, car horn, a door light switch and an old headlamp. Discreetly connect this up to the gates or even the stable or tack room doors, so that as soon as they are opened lights and noise are activated (remember to fit an isolation switch for the daytime).

It is also possible to modify a domestic alarm system for stable use, but it is important to use door contacts rather than sensors to avoid false alarms. Should your budget allow, you could consider Active Infra-red beams covering the approach to the stables; connected to a radio transmitter they can provide a silent alarm to your house.

Last, but not least, a dog may not be very high-tech, but Rover is still very effective.