NBLA Members Seek Help For Round-Up Of Loose Horses

By Steve Bigham

It has happened more than a few times in recent years. Newtown Police respond to a report of horses running loose along a local road in the middle of the night. These capable cops usually succeed in rounding them up. But then comes the hard part – trying to determine where these animals came from. Well, that’s a horse of a different color.

These horses do not wear licenses, like dogs, so with more than 1,000 of them living in Newtown, it becomes a guessing game. Police usually call members of the Newtown Bridle Lands Association (NBLA) in the hopes that they might recognize the horse. NBLA President Cindy Blackman-Fogliano has been awakened in the hours after midnight on several occasions to identify a horse and/or return it to its proper home.

“The PD usually gives me a call, so I’ll go out and round up the horses then walk them a mile or so in three-degree weather under the stars,” she explained.

Last summer, the Fogliano residence received a 4 am call from the police informing them that two ponies had been seen running eastbound in westbound traffic on Interstate 84 between exits 9 and 10.

“Thank God it was Sunday morning. By the time I got there, a cowboy from Montana had already tied the horses to a tree. He used a long rope from his truck as a halter and somehow managed to round them up,” said Mrs Fogliano-Blackman, who, with a police escort, then led the horses all the way to exit 8 in Hawleyville.

The NBLA offers this “round up” service to the horse community as a public safety measure, but in an effort to make its job easier, it is asking horse owners to provide information about their horse and a number where they can be reached should their horse(s) get loose.

“The PD will call a point person and they will tell us where the horse is loose. The point person will then call a member in that sector of town and hopefully that person will know who to call,” the FBLA president explained.

NBLA member Chrys Emery says it is time horse owners start taking responsibility for their animals.

“You can’t expect the police, who don’t know how to handle horses, to try to figure out where these horses belong,” she said.

Some NBLA members have suggested a system of fines for horse owners whose horses continue to escape. Others have suggested licensing horses as an alternative to taxing them as personal property.

Loose horses usually don’t stray too far from home. No more than a mile from their corral, according to the NBLA.

“We’re lucky to have our police department be so tolerant,” Mrs Fogliano-Blackman noted. “This is part of living in Newtown. This is not an odd occurrence for Newtown Police.”

Got a horse to report to the NBLA? Call Missy Gregson at 426-0646 or Cindy Fogliano-Blackman at 270-1558.