I feel very fortunate as a human being. I’m 53 years old, I’ve never had to fight in a war, lived in fairly nice neighborhoods and no one close to me (other than pets) has ever passed away other than my grandparents when I was a little boy. I’ve seen very few tragedies with my own eyes but what I saw yesterday broke my heart… a horse lying injured in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.

My daughter and I were on Herndon Ave. in Fresno yesterday when traffic slowed to a halt. Odd for a Sunday afternoon. Then we got to the front of the line and saw first hand the reason for a 3 lane road being constricted to one lane, it appeared a large horse had fallen out it’s trailer and onto the road. The equine was barely moving but it’s eyes were still open and it’s ears were rotating a bit as it lay there on it’s side with a bit of blood near it’s head. I decided not to snap a photo because I didn’t want to exploit the poor thing’s pain (the photo above is from a perfectly healthy horse of a friend of mine). It absolutely broke my and my daughters hearts. A big majestic animal was more than likely about to be put down and somehow it just didn’t seem right.

How did the horse got out of its trailer I wondered? I didn’t see that the vehicle towing it had gotten into an accident so I surmised that either the door or lock on the back of the trailer failed or perhaps the horse got spooked and kicked the door open and stepped out with the truck pulling its trailer still going at a good rate of speed. Either way, completely tragic.

If you own a horse and transport it in a trailer, please follow these safety tips from trailridermag.com and help avoid the kind of tragedy my daughter and I saw yesterday.