A horse who was saved from a Portuguese slaughterhouse made his TV debut last night.
Five year old Samuel L Jackson, or Sammy for short, made his first solo on-screen appearance on the Coronation Street cobbles on Monday night.
The young horse belongs to Dolbadarn Film Horses, a company based in Llanberis in Gwynedd who specialise in supplying trained horses to TV and film companies.
Having taken over the family-run business over 20 years ago, owner Dylan Jones now has 18 horses, all of whom have appeared in various films and TV shows including War Horse, Game of Thrones and Dr Who.
Mr Jones, a theatre studies graduate turned horsemaster, has now added the ITV show to the long list of projects he's worked on after Sammy's appearance earlier this week.
Viewers saw Sammy on the soap alongside the older and more experienced horse called Rabanete, who has also appeared in the Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and BBC show Merlin.
Although fans will have to wait a little while to see full extent of Sammie's involvement in the show, the plot will centre on a group of the street's residents who club together to buy a racehorse.
![Sammy and Indiana Jones when they were rescued from the slaughterhouse.](https://i2-prod.dailypost.co.uk/incoming/article16342748.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_ASR_CFN280519horse_01.jpg)
The 42 year old said: "Sammy has a very interesting back story.
"He was only a youngster, maybe around four months old, when I found him.
"I'd originally spotted another foal, a bay (now named Indiana Jones) who had been rescued from a Portuguese slaughter house by a horse charity around five years ago.
"I got in touch with the charity and they told me that the bay had been ripped away from its mother and was in poor health, very malnourished and was essentially waiting on deaths door.
"I showed interest in bringing him over here and thankfully they managed to raise enough money to get him out of the slaughterhouse and into a safe-house holding area.
![](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/iRdNy5tH/poster.jpg)
"While the bay at the slaughterhouse, he had a stable room mate there - that was Sammy.
"They asked me if I wanted to take both the bay and Sammy and being the soft soul that I am, I agreed."
Out of the 15 foals in the slaughter house at the time, sadly only Indiana Jones and Sammy were rescued.
Mr Jones added: "He was such a scrawny little thing, they both were, but once they were fed up and strong enough to travel they came over here.
![Sammy, 5, with his liberty trainer Jasmine](https://i2-prod.dailypost.co.uk/incoming/article16342761.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_ASR_CFN280519horse_02.jpg)
"For a year we pretty much just let them settle in - slaughterhouse horses tend to have a lot of issues having lived with the sense of death for so long, they're very intelligent, so we wanted to ease them in slowly.
"Since then both horses have started their careers in filming with the pair starring alongside each other in the BBC show His Dark Materials which is due to air this summer."
Mr Jones says that he was approached around two months ago by the show's first assistant director who was looking for advice about filming scenes with horses.
They then offered the contract to Dolbadarn Film Horses due to the complexity of the scenes and the actions required by the horses.
"Sammy has a few more scenes after some of the characters were swindled by a horse dealer in last nights episode, " Mr Jones added, "without giving too much away, the horse's character is quite mischievous and causes havoc, but all will be unveiled this week."
For more information about the horses visit www.filmhorses.co.uk