Catt Jolley had been riding Axel since she was 15.They won Jolley’s first first-place ribbon together. Their birthdays were only one day apart — Axel would have turned 18 on Thursday.Now Jolley is marking her 26th birthday on Friday, mourning her friend.Axel was one of 16 horses killed in a fire at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Stables over the weekend. The cause of the blaze is still being investigated.READ MORE:Horses killed in Sunnybrook Stables fire identified16 horses killed in Sunnybrook Stables fire“I felt so helpless, knowing he wasn’t able to be saved or just feeling the pain as I thought how terrified he must have been smelling the smoke and not knowing what was going on,” Jolley said.Jolley volunteered at Saturn Stables in St. Catharines for roughly three to four years, completing her high school co-op hours and taking regular lessons, all the while growing increasingly closer to Axel who was living there at the time. “I still remember when my dad drove me out there and when I first saw him, I knew — That’s the horse. That’s the horse that will take me places,” she said of Axel, who was originally known as Maxx.After Axel was sold in 2010, Jolley didn’t know where Axel went. She spent almost two years searching for him, until she found him at Sunnybrook Stables in 2012. It was an emotional reunion when she finally tracked him down, and wrapped her arms around him again.“It’s a feeling I can’t describe,” she said. “I was so excited I couldn’t focus on the college class I was in at the time. I was messaging my boyfriend (now husband) while in class to tell him I had found him. When I first saw him again, I was so nervous I wouldn’t be able to come up and pet him and hug him. They let me have some alone time in his stall and I just felt so complete.”She was supposed to go back in November to visit again.“It hurts knowing I won’t be a ...
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