Horse trainers regain footing lost after Puslinch barn fire

To the untrained eye, Kinetic King is just another brown horse, but to Roger Mayotte, he is a lifesaver.

The standardbred harness racer was on the track the evening of Jan. 4, 2016, when flames ripped through Barn One at Classy Lane Stables in Puslinch Township.

• Barn fire in Puslinch, Ont., kills more than 40 racehorses
• Electrical failure to blame for January 2016 Puslinch barn fire

Had he been inside, Kinetic King would have been among the 43 racehorses who died in the blaze.

"It's a fortunate thing that he was actually racing that night," said Mayotte last week, staring hard at his horse and stroking its broad neck. "[He] probably kept me in the game, because at that point I wanted out."

Mayotte, who is a soft-spoken man and has been training horses for more than 40 years, said the devastation of the fire hit him hard.

"I was lost, totally lost. I couldn't do anything, couldn't think straight. It was a very terrible time in my life."

He said it was caring for and training Kinetic King that got him through the first month, until he was ready to take on a batch of younger horses.

Mayotte is one of a handful of trainers who lost their livelihoods when Barn One burned to the ground, and have spent the past year grieving for the horses they lost and rebuilding their careers.

Almost all the trainers have returned to Classy Lane Stables and are working in Barn Six, which was built on the eastern edge of the 135 acre farm, right on the foundation of Barn One.

Inside the barn, stablehands are busy harnessing horses to jog carts and sending them out the door as soon as the trainer grabs the reins. There's no time to lose when multiple horses have to be exercised before the day is up.

Ben Wallace has 15 horses in Barn Six, which may seem like a lot, but it's three horses fewer than the number he had in Barn One when it burned down.

Unlike Mayotte, Wallace knew as soon as the smoke cleared that he would be training again.

"It's all I've ever done," he said, "There was no, 'Why me?' situation. It was, 'Let's regrouphereand see what we can come up with.'"

Hopefully there's some light at the end of the tunnel with the ones we're training now andhopefully, down the road, we will trip over a couple good horses again.- Ben Wallace

But Wallace admits that starting over hasn't been easy, and he doesn't know if he will ever regain the footing he lost in the fire.

"You can't buy a stable, you have to develop a stable," he said. "I've been doing this a long time, and I thought we were on the cusp of developing a nice group of young horses. Once they're all gone, you're starting with nothing."

Although he said the horses he is training now are not equal to the horses he lost, Wallace said he tries not to dwell on that.

"Hopefully there's some light at the end of the tunnel with the ones we're training now andhopefully, down the road, we will trip over a couple good horses again."

With that, he hops into a cart and drives out the barn behind one of his protgs. His cart skirts around a small, snow-covered garden before veering off to the right, toward the track.

The garden is new, planted in the past year as a place to sit and remember the horses that lost their lives in the fire.

In the middle there is a sapling, girded on either side by marble headstones, engraved with names like Georges Legacy, Dreamliner and Freedom Summer.

"It is quite nice," said trainer Chantel Mitchell, standing at the garden's edge. "Now it's snow-covered, so you really can't see it."

Like Mayotte, Mitchell had one horse racing the night of the fire, which meant she was back at work the next day.

"There wasn't much downtime, which I think was a good thing," she said. "If I would have gone from having a bunch of work to do one day, to absolutely nothing the next day, I might have had more time to wallow and maybe it might hurt a little more."

She said the men and women who owned the seven horses she lost were also eager to send her new horses to train, so there was no shortage of work to do.

What there was, however, was a shortage of equipment.

"We had to replace everything. We had to replace all our harnesses, all our bridles, our carts, blankets. Everything was new," she said.

"You don't realize how much things cost until you're buying it in bulk like that, because everybody bought all their things over a period of time."

Mitchell said it was the generosity of family, past owners and a GoFundMe initiative that made it possible for her to rebuild her business after the fire.

The online fundraising campaign raised over $600,000 for those affected by the fire, according to the page set up by the Central Ontario Standardbred Association.

"I found it quite difficult accepting charity," she said, "but at the end of the day, I was extremely grateful to get it, because it was a huge help for everything. I couldn't even thank everybody enough for how they helped us out."