As a racehorse owner, there are countless things you pray never happens to your horse.
Tendon issues, bad barriers, checks in running, elevated temperatures, being galloped on, etc, et al.
But read on, for this is one you probably NEVER thought to add.
At Fort Erie racetrack on the weekend, and Fort Erie is in Ontario, Canada, one of the leading trainers took his horse out for an afternoon pick.
The trainer was Ken Albu and he sits in 2nd spot on the Fort Erie Trainer’s Premiership this year.
Now, taking your horse out of its box so the box can be cleaned in the afternoon, to have a pick of green grass, well, that happens in pretty much every stable, as we know, across the world.
This time, however, Albu’s horse, MR CHANGUE, felt the earth move.
Literally.
As Mr Changue stood there biting into the green grass, the exact spot he was standing on just opened up, collapsing under neath him, and he fell into it.
The hole, and this whole thing happened in a scant few seconds, was full of dirty muddy water. Overnight, it seems a water-main burst and the earth a foot below the surface became a pond.
When the 500 or so pounds of Mr Changue stood on it, the ground gave up the ghost and he fell into a sink hole.
People saw this strange happenstance occur and alarm bells went off everywhere. 911 was dialed and firemen came from nearby as fast as they could.
But they needed to hurry.
Mr Changue’s head was the only thing visible after a few seconds and he had to tread water, all while his strapper bravely held his head above the water line.
Tom Valiquette, the chief operating officer of Fort Erie was proud of his staff.
“Key members of our maintenance, security and race office staff have been trained through programs such as the Large Animal Emergency Rescue Training on how to manage these situations,” he said adding a sink hole was not ever a consideration during their training.
“Along with the help of our horse people and the Fort Erie Fire Department, they were able to rescue the horse from the sink hole safely and unharmed.”
In the end, Mr Changue (Gottcha Gold-Glory Mountain) a winner of 6 races thus far, was safely rescued.
But not before this rather fascinating scare rocked all of Fort Erie and its people.
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