Sandy Dooney, left, and Ros Rowe are mourning the loss of the Leg-Up Trust's golden horse, Peaches. Photo / Duncan Brown
Sandy Dooney, left, and Ros Rowe are mourning the loss of the Leg-Up Trust's golden horse, Peaches. Photo / Duncan Brown
The stress of Guy Fawkes is being blamed for the death of a Hawke's Bay horse whose "golden" personality helped change lives.
Leg-Up Trust Peaches was a favourite with children gaining confidence and life skills by being around horses.
But she died on Tuesday after developing a stress-related condition overthe past few days. Leg-Up Trust founder Ros Rowe believes it was caused by fireworks.
Rowe said the organisation had staff with the horses while fireworks were going off, but it wasn't enough to save Peaches.
Horses were naturally flight animals, and locking them up to stop them bolting due to the noise could also cause them stress, she said.
Rowe, along with other staff members at Leg-Up Trust, want a ban on the commercial sale of fireworks, and public displays limited to one a year.
"I don't want any more lives to be lost.
"People with animals, and particularly horses, do all they can to protect their animals but at the end of the day we're at the mercy of those who think it's okay in rural areas - where there's a lot of livestock - to let them off."
