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Four-footed captive ‘arrested’
Published 12:00pm Thursday, May 28, 2009The Petersons weren’t expecting company Sunday evening.
So Stu Peterson was a little shocked when a horse was standing in his driveway. The problem: No rider came with the horse.
Peterson walked out of his to go into the woods and “standing in the driveway is this crazy horse,” Peterson said.
They live on a large acreage west of Dent, quite a distance from neighbors, which means they don’t receive a lot of visitors who drop in unexpectedly, Peterson said, explaining why he was shocked. He added that he thought maybe it was a prank and the horse’s owner was standing behind a nearby tree.
“I looked at it and it looked at me,” Peterson said. The horse then moseyed into the woods on Peterson’s property while Peterson went back into his house to begin calling his neighbors.
But none of the neighbors knew who the horse belonged to. The next step was to coral the horse until its owner could be found. Peterson searched the woods for the horse, finding him calmly munching on grass.
“He came right to us,” Peterson said.
The horse was brought back to the house while Peterson again tried to find the owner by calling neighbors, but to no avail. Peterson then called the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Office for assistance and a deputy was dispatched to get to the bottom of it.
Two other horses on the lam had been found by deputies, Peterson said, and the deputy was sure the horse in Peterson’s driveway belonged with them. The deputy suspected the horses belonged to a family that lived several miles south of the Petersons, he said. The family was out of town for the weekend and the neighbors had reported that several horses were missing.
The deputy attached the horse’s rope to his squad car and they went off into the sunset.
Peterson said he believes the horse had been meandering around the property for hours that day before he was found in the driveway.
“He was probably happy. I probably shouldn’t have had him arrested,” Peterson said. All in all, “it was pretty unusual,” he said.
