Page 13 - August 2019 Thoroughbred Highlight

The Incredible Rescue of Mr. Changue
By Perry Lefko
Mr. Changue will never be compared to Tone Broke, but on the most important day this year at Fort Erie Racetrack he received as much applause for winning a minor claiming race as the victor of the Prince Of Wales.
While racing on the stakes undercard, Mr. Changue won a 61⁄2 furlong race for horses with claiming tags of $6,250-$6,000 and the crowd stood up and cheered as if he had won the second leg of the Canadian Triple Crown.
running back over.”
It took about 30 seconds for the horse to fall into the
ground in what had become a sink hole, which was later determined to be caused by a broken water main that had apparently happened overnight. The weight of the horse caused the ground to give way. Mr. Changue happened to be the rst horse Albu’s crew took out that morning to graze. The day before there had been no issues with the ground when the horses were grazing. Albu trains 14 horses.
Only 12 days before, the six-year-old son of Gotta Gold happened to be grazing on the backstretch near the barn of his trainer, Ken Albu. He was waiting for Harry Eder, Co-ordinator of Horsemen’s Relations, to come by and take his entry for Mr. Changue to run three days later.
Albu was standing beside the groom who had control of the horse with a lead shank attached to Mr. Changue’s halter. When Albu noticed Mr. Changue appear to take a bad step in behind, he asked the groom to give him the lead shank.
And then the ground immediately began to give way. It was only about four feet from the barn, an area Albu grazed his horses every day.
An image of Mr. Changue in the sink hole from the Facebook page of Kohlsmith
“We walk by there dumping baskets of hay and water buckets and
we never even thought about something like that happening,” Albu said.
“We were using the area constantly. When he rst went into the hole, my reaction was to get the help he needed and get him out of there.”
Another shank was quickly attached to the other side of the halter to keep the horse’s head up.
“He was thrashing around like crazy and I knew if he continued doing that the chance (of him surviving that) was not very good because they go crazy and berserk trying to get out and there was no way he was going to get out,” Passero said. “This horse loves mints and I had a pocketful
“He just slowly sank into the hole (from the back end),” Albu said. “It’s not like he dropped into the hole. He just eased back end to front end and that’s probably why he didn’t hurt himself.”
Mr. Changue’s owner, Sam Passero, who claimed the horse as a three-year-old for $10,000 and walks the horse every day after he’s done training, was in the process of getting into his car to leave the track to take care of his 92-year-old mother and feed her breakfast. Albu started yelling for him to come back, saying something about Mr. Changue, but Passero didn’t see the horse and thought he had run off.
“He thought I was messing with him, to be honest with you, because he didn’t see the horse,” Albu said. “I said, ‘the horse is in the ground, man’ and he came
and I started feeding him and he did calm down and stopped thrashing around.”
Eder quickly made some calls to mobilize added help, beyond what had already become a gathering of horse people wanting to help the distressed horse and his trainer. The news had spread like the proverbial wild re.
Among the people who helped immediately were two veterinary technicians, Jen Kohlsmith and Katrina Barnhardt, who worked for Dr. James Crawford, the veterinarian who looks after Albu’s horses. The techs reached down and gave Mr. Changue some mild sedatives.
“They put themselves at great risk,” Albu said of the veterinary help. Continued Page 14
Thoroughbred Highlight - Page 13 - August 2019