Farm Instruction Manual: Lost Horse

Upon arriving home from work late one afternoon, I found a note from a neighbor attached to my back door.

"Your horse was last seen running east from our house," it read.

A call to the neighbor revealed that Scuba, who had been on the farm eight days, had hopped over the fence and was grazing in a bean field when a farmer spotted her. Not knowing who she belonged to, he led her to the neighbor's house. Before he could reach the house, dogs spooked Scuba and she took off.

It was early November and daylight was disappearing fast.

As a former endurance rider, I knew horses could travel miles. I also knew it was getting dark, and there were lots of wooded areas and standing corn fields around us.

I went for the easy step first. I called the sheriff's office. No one had reported a loose horse. By that point, my husband was home. We got in our cars and began stopping at all houses with horses. As we too were relatively new to the area, this wasn't an easy task.

After canvassing houses within a mile radius, our search turned up nothing. My husband got out his spotlight and began driving the country roads, spotlighting fields and woods. While doing this, a passerby stopped.

"You spotting for coon or a horse?" the man asked.

When he'd arrived home from work, he'd found Scuba, our grey mare, hanging out with his blind Appaloosa gelding. He'd put her in the barn and started looking for her owner. He lived about three miles away.

When I arrived at his farm, I gave my mare a big hug. "Scuba, you ready to go home?" I asked.

The man looked at me oddly. "Her name's Scuba?" he asked.

When I nodded yes, he told me he was a dive instructor. Somehow my mare had managed to find one of the few scuba divers in the flatlands of Ohio.