The strange case of six missing horse rugs

The night after the fireworks display the barn was raided and our horse rugs were taken.

Good job I’ve watched a lot of Columbo because I was able to quickly rule out a reprisal attack for us disagreeing with the fireworks. I believe I can categorically prove it was nothing to do with that, although it is possible the actual culprit decided to pounce at this moment using the fireworks upset as a distraction.

We got through the dreaded event without injury in the end, me holding Darcy on the end of a lunge line as the rockets went off above her head. How horses cope with explosions like a battlefield, silver flashes that light the entire sky and bangs that ricochet around them I will never know. It made me think of horses in the first world war, God bless them.

We had moved her to a nearby stable beforehand, but as other displays began further away she became desperate. She was worse confined in a strange place, so we moved her back.

By the time the fireworks started next to us I needed Valium to keep me calm enough to hold her steady. But we survived, and I left the field around 9 p.m. The next morning at 8 a.m., I returned to find the barn ransacked.

Two of the other girls instantly suspected we had been hit in a revenge attack for complaining. But I was able to dismiss that. You see, when I say I’ve watched a lot of Columbo, I mean I’ve watched every episode so many times I can recite the lines. The detective in the raincoat is my kind of guy. I spend my life nitpicking at things that don’t add up.