December Happy Tails Rescue
Rescue Team Pulls Dangerous Wire from stallions leg
Remember Gold Spot from last month’s post? Deb Sutherland wrote a beautiful story about the stunning stallion’s life on the range. If you want a refresher on him, check it out here.
Well this month, Gold Spot got himself in tangle… literally! He got a long wire stuck around his leg and the LRTC team came to his rescue. Here’s what the team had to say about the situation:
While preparing to leave on another call, LRTC was in contact with the range manager at Wild Horse Connection regarding a report of a stallion with a wire wrapped around his left hind pastern. The wire was trailing 20 feet behind him and he was with a couple of other bachelor stallions. Four team members diverted to the scene including one who was transporting the panel trailer for the other job. They grabbed a variety of cutting and grabbing tools before heading that way.
The first two members arrived and sized up the situation. They got permission to contain the three horses on a fenced one-acre lot. Some hay was tossed to keep them calm and one member carefully used cutters to shorten the length of wire trailing behind the horse. This lessened the chance he would get it snagged on something causing it to cut into his flesh.
When the panel trailer arrived, they created a box corral with panels against the existing fence and set up a bait trail into the corral. When the horse with the wire went in, they closed him in and then shifted the panels to create a squeeze and slowly narrowed it down.
They continued to shorten the wire until only a couple of inches were left and then used a steel wire cutter to snap the twisted wire encircling his pastern. They were then able to use a hook to pull the wire off (with a little help from the horse and a flick-kick response!).
Fortunately, any serious injury was averted. While the wire left an indentation in his hair it had not yet cut into his skin. He was released to his buddies and then all three released off the property.
THANK YOU to everyone who helped Gold Spot out of a potentially very dangerous situation!
