Trama at Horse Expo!!!

[Laya]

Today at the 4th annual Horse World Expo, my friend Julie and I witnessed a bay warmblood in an outside arena being led by its handler go down. It kept rearing and then it twisted in the air backwards and fell on its back. You could actually hear the thud from where we were standing around fifty yards away. This horse is now suffering neck and spinal injury and couldn't get up. It was about 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours when we came back. The horse was still down with a protective screen around it. It made me realize that anything can happen with even a top-notch show horse.

Has anyone ever witnessed a horrible accident?

[bren]

Yes, a few times. I was still in high school, showing harness ponies at fairs. We were beside a absolutely huge trailer( for draft horses, i think it was a 6 horse trailer when the trailer started shaking back and forth and someone started screaming from inside. There was a woman trapped by a couple of fighting horses in there, it took about 15 minutes to get her out of there and she looked like she had been beaten when they took here away. The trailer was literally moving. Another time I almost had a problem myself, the owner of the ponies had a beautiful little hackney mare who had had her jaw broken by a previous owner. Well he was usually very careful about hooking the curb chain VERY loose but I guess it twisted on her one time. I went to drive into the ring with her and she just went crazy, bucking and rearing. I hung on to her cause there was no way I was going to bail out,..there were little kids all around us. I got her under control,he loosened the chain and I went in and won 1st, afterwards I had heard that my mom almost had a heart attack, I guess her back feet were striking pretty close to my face, you sit very close to the horse in those carriages.
We also had to unload 4 horses out of his trailer on the side of a major highway because he had loaded two horses side by side that hated each other. Got dragged by one of them while lunging it too. No way I was going to let go of a $3000 pony! never told the guy figured he wouldnt let me help him anymore! got the worst grass burn on my belly!!LOL :)