What was first thought to be a joke among brothers now has a family laughing in Hampton, N.B.

A couple who raises racing horses awoke Tuesday morning to find one of their colts standing on the roof of their garage.

Shocked by the scene, they rushed to help the horse, but not before snapping a photo of the one-year-old colt stuck on the roof.

“We saw the picture,” says Pat Downey, who owns the horse with her husband, Stephen. “He called as soon as he got him off because he didn’t have any trouble. Well, it took him a while, but he didn’t have any trouble getting him off.”

She says the horse, Must Win, stays on the farm with her husband’s brother Archie and that it was Archie who awoke to the strange sight. She says she and her husband were baffled by the photo and convinced it was a joke.

“It looked like Archie had done a joke on Stephen and Photoshopped the horse on the roof because that just doesn’t happen,” she says. “You would never get a horse to do something like that."

“I sent it to a lot of people and a lot of people laughed,” says Stephen Downey. “They think it’s not real. They think you’ve Photoshopped it but it’s real and it really happened and it’s a good story because nothing bad happened.”

They aren’t certain how Must Win managed to get on the roof but assume he somehow jumped up three feet and scrambled onto the structure.

They managed to herd him off the far side of the roof with a long pole, prompting him to jump the three feet down.

Must Win was checked for injuries but he appears to be in good health.

“There was one spot, the hoof went through on the roof and there’s a hole,” says Pat. “The drop must be 12 feet down to the ground so I don’t think he would have recovered from it because we couldn’t have gotten him out.”

The Downeys have raised horses at the farm for several years but say this is the first time a horse has climbed onto their roof.

“In the 15 years we’ve had horses, I can honestly saying nothing like this has ever happened,” says Pat.

The Downeys typically have several horses on the farm but they are being trained in Saint John, leaving the colt all alone.

“I think he was just bored. He’s here alone and he’s usually not alone,” says Stephen. “He’s like a two or three-year-old kid and he was just looking for some excitement and he got into trouble like a regular kid would do.”

The Downeys have now put a fence to the roof in the hopes that will stop their horses from spending another night high off the ground.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ashley Dunbar