The two horses looked like they had never seen anything like it. They had wound up in a dark car park renowned for the practice known as ‘dogging’ after being found wandering perilously close to the M25.
A jockey who just happened to be passing — ahem — was holding on to them as the usual nocturnal customers of this beauty spot carried on doing what they do.
The police were out in force, busy trying to solve this baffling crime. We arrived after getting a call from a neighbouring horse owner warning us that horses in our area were loose. After racing to our fields around 9 p.m. to find them all peacefully grazing, our fences and gates intact, we set about joining a group who had gathered to help.
Three livery yard owners were there, one being the chap who received the original call from the police when the horses were first spotted near the hard shoulder. The officer had ripped a strip off him, and he had had to explain that all his charges were safely tucked up in bed in their stables. However, he then rang us and we rang more people and someone put it on Facebook.
It was pitch dark in the car park — or Public Sex Environment, as the police prefer to call it — when we began gathering in the picnic area where the jockey was holding the horses. Both were in expensive fly rugs, immaculately groomed, with glossy coats and well-trimmed hooves. Somebody loved these horses. Any fool could see that they were treasured and cared for. Not the police officer in charge, however, who, as the builder boyfriend and I approached him, bellowed at us: ‘Are you the owner?’
We explained we had come to help.
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