In today’s local news there were two seemingly unrelated horse stories. In Derbyshire Macdonald’s refused to serve a horse
drawn carriage; claiming health and safety concerns. In other news in Liverpool a funeral was disrupted when a horse drawn hearse
went out of control, injuring the horses’ handlers and damaging two vehicles.
Although on their own both reports seem minor and unrelated we believe that there is no such thing as coincidence. What are the chances of two horse related stories on the same day? Well to test this theory we put the word “horse” into the BBC News search archive. All that came up were the two from today.
Of course it is possible that most horse related stories do not make it onto the BBC’s radar, so we also checked the news section of hookedonhorses.co.uk. The “Horses in the Headlines This Week” section had not been updated since February. It must be a slow year for horses.
We suspect that it is possible that horses are reacting against such discrimination as shown by Macdonald’s by these minor acts of vandalism, drawing attention to their plight.
We asked Graham, our man in the field to investigate further. He had this to tell us:
“McDonald’s have allegedly served a horse on many occasions… along with dog, badger, cat, rat and on the very rare occasion, beef!”
When asked for his view on the retaliation he added:
“It’s not the first time I’ve seen horses go nuts and bolt. Sometimes, they latch onto something, get unhinged, and can’t handle it. Then they hammer off down the road and the driver is screwed…”
“I asked a pony to comment but he was unable to as he was just a little hoarse. The Shire Horse said he was fed up with dragging up the same old stuff But the steeple chaser jumped at the chance.”
Sometimes we wonder if Graham takes his job seriously. That being said this was still less disturbing than Jeff.
There is some good news though. The carriage was served later that day at a KFC drive thru.
You can find all the original reports here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-13548984
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-13545547
http://www.hookedonhorses.co.uk/2011/horses-in-the-headlines-this-week/
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/864368-kfc-oks-horse-drive-thru-after-mcdonalds-turn-rider-away
