29/07/2026
🌈💔Farewell our beautiful Maxo Mighty💔🌈
This has taken me a couple of days to come to terms with and I still don't think I have, I'm not sure I ever will🥹
Heartbroken doesn't even begin to describe how we're feeling right now. On Monday last week after Max's terrific 2nd place in the QLD Derby we received a call to say that he had struck out at a passing horse and cut his fetlock pretty bad but the vets report was good, he'd missed everything important and would be back on track in no time. He stayed with the vet for a few days before going back to a box at his QLD stables to begin healing, all reports were good.
A week later on Monday morning we received another call from a fellow harness racing participant Tayla French saying she had found Max extremely unwell in his box and had taken him to the vet where he collapsed in the car park. It was determined that Max had Colitis, they managed to get him into a stable and we asked the vets to throw everything they had at him and crossed everything our boy would pull through. The updates that followed were not what we wanted and unfortunately at around 6:30pm on Monday night the vet rang and said that he had not improved and was in fact getting worse and it was decided that the kindest thing to do was to let him cross the rainbow bridge where he would be free from pain🌈😢
The fact we couldn't be with him in his final hours is something I don't think we will ever forgive ourselves for and the guilt of sending him away instead of taking him ourselves is something I'm struggling to move past.
This has been absolutely soul destroying and has us questioning everything. We are only a small stable, most of our horses are home bred , they're with us from birth and they're not just a horse to us, they're our babies, part of our family and our lives. I love this sport but times like these make it hard to find the will to keep going🥺
Yesterday it was 12 months since Max survived a horror float accident, to get back to the track at all was a miracle in itself let alone be running in Group 1 races. Max had 14 Starts for 7 Wins, 1 Second and 1 Third.
RIP Our beautiful Maxi, we will never be ok with you not being here. You had so much life ahead of you and so much more to give, we were SO incredibly proud of you!
We hope you're enjoying endless carrots 🥕and throwing hay around like it's free up there, run free forever buddy Xx💔
Our thoughts are with our co- owners Frank Cotro and Maria along with their families.
We wish to thank the staff at WestVETS Equine Hospital for looking after our beautiful Maxi and trying their best to save him.
We also cannot thank Tayla enough for taking it upon herself to get Max to the vet, she then called us to let us know the situation and continued to check in with the vet in the hours that followed. It honestly means the world to know that there are still good people in this world that will go out of their way to help someone else when many others would turn a blind eye.
