It took a couple of tries, but a crew of firefighters from Melfort managed to free a horse from a deep pit of mud outside the city this week.
The call to Melfort Fire and Rescue came in at 7:34 a.m. CST on Sept. 16. A horse was trapped in a hole filled with mud on a farm east of the city, which is about 176 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
Fire chief Leonard Whitney was one of the firefighters on scene.
“He was mud from head to toe,” Whiteny said in an interview with CBC. “His eyes were almost covered over. Horses don’t like to be in confined spaces like that and it was obvious he did everything he could to try and get out, so he just needed a little help.”
It’s not clear how the horse got trapped in the first place or how long it was stuck in the pit, which was dug to make way for a pump house. The mud made it impossible for the horse to get any traction to get himself out.
Whitney said when he arrived it appeared the horse was ready to give up the struggle and was resting its head on the pit’s edge.
“There was definitely an urgency when we got there,” he said. “We could tell that the horse was very stressed out and very exhausted. And so like any other situation we go to, time is always of the essence.”
First, the crew rigged up a sling and pulley system to lift the animal out. But the slick mud proved too much and he slipped out of the sling.
Then they dug a ramp into the pit and coaxed the horse to leave. He walked out of the pit on his own.
Now it was bath time.
“We took him over to the fire truck and we put a nice little fog stream on one of our hoses to wash him down … just kind of a nice gentle rain type of water,” Whitney said, adding that some neighbours at the scene thought it appeared the horse was smiling.
“He actually got to a point where he was almost playing in the water. So yeah, it was nice to see that.”
Whitney said the horse was scheduled to see a veterinarian this week for an assessment, but didn’t appear injured and is doing well.
Whitney said he asked around the fire department to see if anyone had dealt with a situation like this before, but no one, even a member with 40 years of service, has ever responded to a call to rescue a large farm animal from a hole.
