Hayride Gone Haywire

Lauren Barkwick, a former worker at an elite horse ranch known for providing horses for movies and television in Canada, learned an extremely tough lesson about the value of life and freedom of movement. Barwick had competed with and defeated other applicants to land an internship at the Mission, British Columbia studio ranch. She was only a week into her new job when she had a catastrophic accident that left her irreversibly paralyzed.

Work at the studio ranch required difficult physical labor, and Barwick eagerly sought out the position. Part of her duties at the ranch included feeding the horses with bales of hay at 7:00 a.m. On the fateful morning of her accident, Barwick climbed up a poorly stacked pile of hay bales to knock a bale down to feed the horses.

Once Barwick had climbed to the top of the hay bales, she realized it was unsafe. She jumped back down to the ground immediately. A bale of hay came with her and smashed her to the ground. It broke her back and left her paralyzed from the waist down. The accident had smashed two bones in her spine and severed her spinal cord.

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