Horse Illustrated Magazine

Out of a serious situation comes an amusing anecdote, and one very bright pink horse.

First, the serious situation. More than 200 wildfires are currently burning in vast sections of inland British Columbia, Canada. Some areas have been placed under evacuation orders as crews struggle to contain the most destructive fires.

Evacuating horses and large livestock is always a challenge in cases of natural disasters as owners may not have sufficient trailer capacity readily available, and it’s not always easy to find a safe location to take horses to. Horse owners will sometimes let their animals loose if disaster is imminent and evacuation isn’t possible. Because horses may lose halters or collars, owners will sometimes spray paint their phone number on their horses’ bodies or write it in permanent marker on a hoof so that if the horses run off, there’s a better chance they can be returned later on.

And that’s where the story of Rosy begins.

Rosy’s owner, Cindy Roddick, asked her 15-year-old son, Jacob Sharkey, to use a non-toxic spray paint to write their phone number on Rosy and the family’s other horse. But he missed an important part of the request. He didn’t get the “phone number” part, and instead covered the white parts of the pinto’s coat with bright pink paint.

It made sense to him at the time.

“I thought she told me to just spray paint the entire horse to make it visible,” Sharkey told The Canadian Press. “That way, if we had to let them go, people could find them.”

According to Global News, the paint is a non-toxic variety made specifically for marking livestock, and Sharkey is now tasked with washing it off.

In the meantime, Roddick had her daughter post a photo of rose-colored Rosy to Facebook so that others could share a laugh that came out of an otherwise stressful situation.

Tap here for more information and resources from horse-canada.com for horse owners affected by the British Columbia Wildfires.

Leslie Potter is a writer and photographer based in Lexington, Kentucky. www.lesliepotterphoto.com