SPCA rescue leads to ‘the best life’ for Gripper and Boy

Trevor Harrison – "everyone calls me Gripper" – has had to deal with a lot of adversity in his life. And meeting a standardbred he called Boy earlier this year has given him a major and unexpected boost.

In January 2002 Harrison, who lives at Matamata, broke his neck in a car accident.

"I was pretty munted," he says, "they gave me a 5 per cent chance of ever walking again, on crutches."

He spent six months at the Otara Hospital – Spinal Unit.

 "I'm what they call an incomplete walking tetraplegic," Harrison says, "I can walk but with a limp on my right side.

In January this year, nearly 20 years to the day since his life-changing accident, Harrison meet the horse who would turn into "his mate".

As the Matamata-based manager of the Waikato horse ambulance he was tasked with picking up a horse in poor condition from Ngāruawāhia in the Waikato.

 The horse was a standardbred, who had raced as Major Bro. He'd had just the one race day start, finishing 11th on debut at Cambridge in October 2020. He was then used a galloping pacemaker.

Harrison decided to call him "Boy" after Taika Waititi's cult classic.

At the time the plan was to take Boy back to the SPCA's property and then ultimately foster him out to someone who'd look after him properly. But that's not the way things worked out.

Gripper, as he puts it, "fell in love with him" and they have become good buddies.

"I've helped him and he's helped me." 

"Every morning he's waiting at the door – he's neighing and carrying on – he's my mate". 

Just recently Harrison, a former jumps jockey and race day attendant, climbed aboard Boy and rode a horse for the first time since his accident.

"My mate Scotty built a ramp for me because I haven't got the leg strength to get on him by myself."