My mare has been visited by a little black stallion who has now escaped his home three times. (Emphasis on “little” as he is a miniature horse.) He gallops on in and stands by her stall, rearing and carrying on, throwing her into this perpetual season.

The first time it happened, it was cute; by the second, not so cute anymore. At some point, it’s going to get dangerous either for me, my horse or the little stallion.

How is he getting away? Apparently he gets tied up like a dog when out to graze and breaks away, and the person who comes to reclaim him isn’t a horse person at all.

Times like these make me think back to my friend who came into owning her first and only horse when the animal was abandoned, emaciated and tied to a tree in a vacant field.

It makes me wish for some licensing mechanism that prevents people from owning horses when they obviously don’t know how to care for them, cannot care for them or cannot see how their actions can put others in jeopardy.

How many people do you know that have minis because “they’re cute”? How many of them barely know squat about horses?

And, the biggest question for me, why is this mini a stallion???

(This takes me back and a little offline to a friend who was performing a feline spay-neuter-re-release program. There was one big full male show cat who got out a few times a year long enough to mate with the feral females and bring my friend more woes with more litters of kittens. My friend’s feeling was that, one day, that breeder's cat would be caught in her trap and would later return home a little lighter…if you get my meaning.)

I almost would like to do that to this mini, which, by the very nature of his being a stallion, caused a territorial gelding to ignore his painful lameness to jump out of his paddock to protect his mares. This stallion also caused my mare to rear and carry on in her stall. What happens if that gelding breaks his leg next time or if he gets a hold of that mini before someone can catch it? I have no doubt that the gelding would kill him. What happens if my horse becomes injured rearing while rearing in her stall because of the mini? Where’s the recourse? What’s the liability?

It’s times like these that I wonder if an animal identification and owner licensing system is requisite for horses--a system that keeps people from acquiring equines when they have no equine experience. And what about documenting horses that are abandoned? If they were microchipped, we would know who abandoned them.

There’s a sign on the road that I drive while going home from work. It says “Abandoning a domesticated animal is a crime.” It’s about a half mile from where I found an abandoned beagle.

In a perfect world, I’d like to see licenses and microchipping required of dogs, cats and horses. An animal found abandoned would be traced back to its owners who would be charged with abandonment of a domesticated animal and fined accordingly. Those fines would go toward funding animal rescues.

Yeah, I know. I’m living in Neverland, and I haven’t worked out the kinks and such, but it would be nice to somehow someday give voice to the voiceless.