Horseracing: Fallon in dog scare at Brighton

Jockey Club officials are awaiting a report into an incident at Brighton racecourse in which a dog attacked Kieren Fallon's mount Dodona.

The incident happened as the horses were milling around at the start before the Cantor Sport 'Football Bookings' Handicap.

The animal, which resembled a bull terrier, leapt up at the three-year-old filly causing Fallon to jump off and the horse to run loose.

The dog chased Dodona, trained by Tim McCarthy, down the course before it left the track and ran off towards some cows in an adjacent field.

It was eventually caught and the race finally went off 30 minutes late.

Dodona, a 5-2 favourite, finished third behind 12-1 winner Crunchy.

Jockey Club spokesman John Maxse watched the events unfold on television.

He said: "That sort of incident is a cause for concern. I'm assuming we will get a report from the racecourse into how it happened.

"We will be following it up with them with regard to maybe how to better police the actual starts of races at Brighton in particular."

Phil Bell, general manager of the track, said putting up a fence around the course to prevent a repeat of the incident would be almost impossible.

He said: "It is a very tough issue because we have public land on either side of the course and people do walk their dogs across it. We could put up a six-foot high fence but we would need to have gates in it because there are rights of way, and the gates would then have to be manned at all time.

"At the moment I cannot say we have an easy answer to it. This was a very unfortunate incident but thankfully no one was hurt. Kieren walked the horse back to the start and took part in the race. We will be investigating what happened.

"Apparently the owner had the dog on a lead when it broke free. We think we know how to track down the dog owner and we shall say she ought to have the dog muzzled. It looked like a stocky powerful terrier, the sort of dog that is supposed to be muzzled."