Where’s Hank? Ponoka County trainer accused of horse theft says she just wants to get paid what she’s owed

RCMP in Alberta have arrested a woman accused of stealing a horse, but say investigators still don't know where the animal is. Hank the horse is shown in an undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout - RCMP

Katrina Doiron didn’t enjoy getting fingerprinted at the police station, but the Ponoka-area horse trainer said someone has to stand up for horse trainers who get stiffed.

Doiron was arrested earlier this week for stealing a horse named Hank that belongs to a Saskatoon horse owner.

Police allege Doiron refused to return Hank the horse to his rightful owner and told officers she was in the process of selling him.

They say even after turning herself in that she won’t tell police where the horse is.

Complicated

In a Friday interview with CTV News, Doiron said it’s a little more complicated than that.

She said she had been training a number of horses for the owner, including one named Kevin that he had been trying to sell for a year.

Doiron said she had a handshake deal with the owner that she would receive 15 per cent of the sale price for Kevin, which the two hoped would fetch somewhere between $20,000 and $25,000.

In the meantime, she said, she paid for a number of costs to maintain Kevin, including two trips to the clinic that she paid $700 out of her pocket, spending eight unbilled hours on one visit and 14 on the second.

The owner was a regular client.

“I’ve been training for him steadily for four years,” she said. “I’ve had dozens of his horses. We’ve done everything from halter break yearlings and get them handling their feet, to starting horses under saddle to taking them to their first shows and selling them for him.

“Many, many horses,” she said. “Sometimes, we’ve had up to seven of his horses here.”

Cash poor

The complication with training Kevin was that the owner was short of cash.

“(He) had never had a lot of money,” Doiron said. “He always struggled with the bills -- we have a lot of history going back of ‘hey, can you pay a couple of hundred dollars here? Can you pay a couple of hundred dollars there?

“I have bills to pay,” she said, “but I always gave him a lot of leeway.”

What they shared was a belief in training up a horse before selling it to the highest bidder at a prestige auction -- and Kevin was the horse they thought would pay off.

“There’s the potential to make some really good money if you market the horses right and if you put a lot of work in,” she said.

The owner, she said, would pay for the basic stuff -- the feed and horseshoes--but even that was difficult for him to manage.

The owner got invited to a horse auction called Elite Invitational Horse Sale in Rimbey in the third week of June, and Doiron focused on getting Kevin in the best possible shape ahead of the sale.

She said that just before the sale, her daughter underwent emergency surgery in May and ended up in hospital for two weeks, but said she was still able to keep working with Kevin.

That’s when the owner’s daughter, who lives closer to Ponoka County, called to say she would be working with Doiron to prepare Kevin for auction.

Tension convention

Doiron says that as well as she got on with the owner, it was just the opposite with his daughter.

“There was tension with the daughter,” she said. “She wanted to steal the show and take over and as the trainer, you’re like, ‘OK, you guys are paying me for a service.

“I’m going to do it as I see fit,” she added. “I see a lot of horses, I know what I’m doing, I’m very confident in what I’m doing -- and I have a plan (for how to market and show a horse).”

It all boiled over just ahead of the auction in late June. First, Doiron showed a second horse that she had trained -- not one of the owner’s -- to a prospective buyer (it ended up selling for $13,000) and when she returned to prepare to show Kevin, the owner’s daughter announced she was going to ride the horse to show it to bidders.

“(She) is not an experienced rider,” she said. “She’s an amateur, she’s not presenting the horse in the quality and the way that we want to show this horse that’s for sale in front of all these people.”

It all came apart when the owner and daughter accused Doiron of neglecting Kevin in favour of the second horse.

After a confrontation, the owner fired her before the auction.

Doiron said at dinner the night before, the owner joked to her that the horse had to get $24,000 at auction or she wouldn’t get paid.

Holding Hank

Doiron said she had a contact at the horse sale who offered to remove Hank off the property, which she says was her only hope of being repaid for her expenses.

“My mom was always concerned about me letting (the owner) rack up the bills,” she said. “She always said, ‘as long as I have a horse of his here, I’m fine.’”

“I know what these horses are worth,” she said. “They’re worth way more than what he owes me, so I never have to worry, because if he doesn’t pay me...they never let a horse leave my property until I was paid.

“So I thought I was protected in that way,” she said.

Doiron returned home and says the owner showed up, taking photographs and getting into a shouting match with her husband and her landlord. The police were called to the property a couple of times.

After that, Doiron says she made a Facebook posting detailing her expenses.

“In my experience, whenever things have gone wrong with horse trainers and stuff, the best thing you can do is provide complete transparency,” she said. “Post every single interaction and post all the messages you can because the truth is a valid defence.”

“Never once did they say, ‘we’ll pay you and come collect Hank,” she said. “I had three other of their horses which they did collect, I allowed them to come get those horses -- but I said this one is worth money, I’m going to hold him until I get paid.”

She denied the police report, which said she was preparing to sell Hank.

“I never planned it,” she said. “I had no intentions of ever selling Hank.”

Animal Keepers Act

Doiron says she applied for a lien under the Animal Keepers Act and while the officer she dealt with said there was a lot of debate about it, ultimately her application was denied because it didn’t fit the legal definition of the act.

“It turns out the wording of the legislation only applies to boarding fees, unfortunately,” she said.

“The purpose of the Animal Keepers Act is to ensure that an animal keeper (a person who is paid to care for an animal that is owned by another person) can collect upon the debt owed by an owner,” it says on the provincial website.

“The process for debt recovery is outlined in the Act. Animals under the Act include cattle, horses, swine, sheep, bison, deer, elk, goats, mules and donkeys.”

Doiron has hired a lawyer with experience in the equine sector to pursue a civil case against the owner to pay her expenses and says a second lawyer has offered to represent her criminal trial pro bono.

“Every one of my colleagues and friends has gone through something like this,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s no protection there for us.”

The 28-year-old mom says she’s not folding.

“My position is that maybe I’m wrong in the eyes of the law,” she said, “but maybe the law is wrong.

“It’s really important (to fight) because of all the victims I know personally -- every single one of my trainer friends has been through this and a lot of us don’t have the money or energy to fight it. It’s a huge mental battle, it really is.

“Luckily,” she added, “I am someone who is built for the job.

“I’ve been through a lot of stuff,” she said. “I can take it. I can hold out for the long fight and do the hard things that everyone wants to do.”

‘OK, I’m a criminal now’

It didn’t make turning herself in to the Rimbey RCMP any easier, however.

“It’s scary walking into that police detachment and like, ‘OK, I’m a criminal now, I’ll take my charge,” she said.

“Here’s my fingerprints.”

Doiron said there’s a gap in the Animal Keepers Act that doesn’t protect trainers.

“The Animal Keepers Act needs reform,” she said. “That’s gonna be my next step -- to look into what we need to do to get the ball rolling on this.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” she said, “but obviously, the people who are enforcing the legislation and issuing the liens -- if they don’t even completely understand it and they think it means what I think, and everybody commenting on these Facebook posts interprets it the same way, obviously it needs to be rewritten.”

“There needs to be some protection for the horse trainers as well,” she said. “Not just the facilities that are boarding the animals.”

Doiron is scheduled to appear in court in October.

Rimbey RCMP are seeking assistance in locating Hank so he can be returned to his rightful owner. Anyone with information about Hank’s whereabouts is encouraged to contact Rimbey RCMP or local police. Anonymous tips can be submitted through Crime Stoppers.

With files from CTV Edmonton and the Canadian Press