By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

LEBANON - Three standardbred racehorses were apparently stolen from a barn at Lebanon Raceway late Friday or early Saturday.

Montana Mike, a 5-year-old gelding, and two other standardbred racehorses - 9-year-old gelding Bud's No Wiser and 5-year-old gelding RK's Bullwinkle - disappeared from their stalls at the Lebanon Raceway in Warren County according to trainers and reports filed with Lebanon police.

The 17 other horses in the barn at the time of the apparent theft were left untouched.

When the grandmother of RK's Bullwinkle's trainer, David Setser, went to the barn at the raceway on Broadway Street in Lebanon Saturday morning to feed the horse, she noticed three horses were missing. Trainers first assumed the horses had escaped into another part of the training area, but when they couldn't find any of the horses, they presumed they were stolen.

"(The thieves) must have somehow gotten past the security," Setser said of the training area of more than a dozen barns housing 20 horses apiece. It's guarded 24 hours a day. "I've just got a big headache over all this."

The three horses are all pacers, meaning they move both legs on the same side forward in unison when racing. The trainers are working with Stolen Horse International Inc., a North Carolina-based nonprofit group that helps victims of horse thievery. The group sent out a global alert about the missing horses.

An estimated 40,000 to 55,000 horses in the United States go missing or are stolen each year, according to the group.

Setser said Sunday that the thief wasn't likely to race the horses because the branded horses easily could be spotted. But he worried the thief could take the horses to be slaughtered.

Montana Mike's trainer, Jeff Brewer of Morrow, said the horse's owner bought it a week ago for $3,000, hoping the gelding could regain his winning form from last year when Montana Mike won five races.

"We don't know how to handle this, really," Brewer said. "It's not something that happens real often."

Brewer's wife, Lynda, went to a livestock sale in Waynesville Saturday night to see if any of the three stolen horses were being auctioned. (No racehorses were at the livestock sale.)

"These horses are just like our pets, only they're our livelihood, too," Lynda Brewer said.

The horse owners don't have insurance on any of the horses, and they hope either the track or the Ohio Harness Horsemen's Association, an industry organization of more than 3,000 standardbred owners, trainers and drivers in Ohio, can help them recoup their losses if the horses aren't found.

Keith Nixon, general manager of Lebanon Raceway, did not return phone calls on Sunday. A raceway representative confirmed the horses had disappeared but said the raceway knew few details.

Lebanon police are investigating but had no suspects on Sunday.

RK's Bullwinkle's owner, Richard Graham of Bellefontaine, estimated his horse is worth about $10,000, and he said he had hoped to sell the horse in a month. RK's Bullwinkle has lifetime winnings of about $12,000, Graham said.

"He raced good this week, and when you're racing good that's when someone wants to buy," Graham said. "It's sad; you get pretty attached to a horse. I delivered him, broke him, put him on the track. I just hope someone at least is feeding him and taking care of him and not taking him to be killed."

Help finding horses

Anyone with information about the weekend horse theft in Lebanon should call Lebanon police at (513) 932-2010 or e-mail trainer Lynda Brewer at lbrewer@go-concepts.com.

Stolen Horse International Inc. online: www.netposse.com

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E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com