Flying Donkey

This picture has been doing the rounds on the email circuit recently and as is typical of these unsolicited emails, it comes without any relevant data.

I wonder if anyone knows when and where this actually happened? In any case it is a nice (but sad) example of someone with a lack of physics knowledge!

What is the relevant physics we ought to teach the owner of the donkey?

What could he do to prevent this happening?

Is it possible to carry this load without the donkey flying up in the air?

A similar occurrence is shown in this YouTube video. The men work desperately fast to get the poor animal down, but I think they did more work than necessary.

Could you advise people in this situation how to proceed?

Cyberspace, 28/07/2008