TROY – A horse at a local farm owes its life to the combined efforts of several groups of first responders.
On Saturday, Oct. 28, a horse at Agape Farms, a stable at 8176 Lebanon Road in Troy, became stuck in a large amount of mud. In a rescue that lasted several hours, the horse was finally removed safely and unharmed, with the Troy Fire Department, the Madison County Technical Rescue Team, the Association of Special Emergency Services of St. Clair, MERS-Large Animal Rescue and several agencies plus the effort.
Mary Jo Lett Guinn and Chris Guinn are the owners of Agape Farms. They don’t live on the farm, but they do live down the street, also with a Troy address. They have their own horses on the farm as well as horses that are owned by others but boarded at Agape Farms.
On Oct. 28, Mary Jo received a call from another Agape Farms boarder about a horse and possibly a rider getting stuck in the mud.
“It’s not far from our house to the farm, so I went that way,” said Mary Jo. “I called my husband, who I thought was running errands, but he was actually at the farm.”
Chris, who had stopped at the farm to drop off some things, was told by an employee that the horse was stuck in the mud. He found the horse and luckily the rider had been able to escape from the mud.
The horse, however, was stuck shoulder-deep in the mud, and the Guinns knew right away that it was a situation he and the rest of the farm’s people weren’t equipped to handle.
“I called the Troy Fire Department and it went to their voicemail tree, so I had to call 911 to get things going,” Chris said.
“It didn’t move”
Mary Jo pointed out that the area where the horse has become stuck is not normally an area where horses and riders would go.
“We have 110 acres and I had never really explored that area,” Mary Jo said. “It was adjacent to a pasture, but it was in thicker woods.”
“There’s a pond down there and it’s covered and none of us had been back there,” Chris added. “We have an employee who has worked at the farm for over 20 years and has never had a horse go as far as this horse did.”
Ironically, the horse, whose name is Wyatt, is probably the oldest horse on the farm. Wyatt is owned by Rhonda and Lee Graham.
“He’s one of our older horses and he’s a rescue horse that’s been with us for about eight months,” Mary Jo said. “We have some horses that stay in the stalls, while the owners of some horses prefer them to be in the pasture, and Wyatt is a pasture horse.
“He is a very good horse and very docile. Thank God he was very calm when he got stuck in the mud, but he was almost completely submerged and still sinking when my husband and I got down there.”
For an animal the size of a horse, suction is a major problem when stuck in mud.
“He wasn’t moving and the only time he got nervous was when they started the rescue operation from his back and they don’t like things coming up behind him,” Mary Jo said. “I was careful to tell everyone to talk to him on the way up.
“I didn’t want it to start sinking any deeper or even faster than it already was.”
‘grateful’
Chris arrived at the scene just after 3pm, and the Troy Fire Department arrived about 15 minutes later. After that there was a steady stream of rescuers, but it was four or five hours before the horse got out of the mud.
The nature of Wyatt’s situation, plus his size and weight, made the nature of his rescue a long and slow process.
“He was sunk in the mud, so everything around him was the same kind of swampy ground as well,” Mary Jo said. “Before anybody else got there, we got a stick and we tied ropes to each end and put it under his head, so if he kept sinking, he’d keep his nose above the mud.”
“They put planks around him so they could start digging to get him out. When the planks went down, though, it kept pushing the mud towards him. Then it started raining and the planks were very slippery, so a neighbor of ours gave us a pop-up tent to put next to it and that helped for a while”.
After his rescue, Wyatt was taken back to an indoor toilet on the farm, where he was cleaned and examined. Some of the boarders, as well as some of the Guinns’ neighbors, showed up to show support and brought coffee to the first responders.
“We are humbled and grateful for what these people did,” Mary Jo said of the agencies that responded to the horse rescue. “They treated that horse as respectfully as a human being. I know it sounds unusual, but these horses are like family members to the people who own them.”
“The owner (Rhonda Graham), who wasn’t riding him at the time he got stuck, didn’t budge once she got there. She had gone out on her usual visit with him and didn’t find him in his normal pasture.I was going back to our clerk to tell him that I couldn’t find Wyatt.
“Then that’s when she saw something white in that patch of woods, which turned out to be her horse. She called him and he called her back.”
‘amazing’
The Guinns are grateful for the combined effort of first responders, which included an ever-evolving rescue plan. First, a path had to be created, as there was no real entrance to the area in the woods where Wyatt was.
Boards were then placed around Wyatt so responders could dig around him safely.
Finally, responders placed a then-sedated Wyatt on a large board, attached the board with a chain to a backhoe, and proceeded to remove him from his muddy trap, surrounded by rescuers, volunteers and the veterinarian.
Other friends and volunteers helped keep the other horses safe as Wyatt was carried across the front pasture on his way to the indoor arena.
“Just seeing all these different lifeguards come together was amazing,” Mary Jo said. “MERS-Large Animal Rescue drove an hour and a half (from St. Clair, Missouri) to be there.”
Also assisting with the rescue was the Association of Special Emergency Services of St. Clair, the Madison County Technical Rescue Squad and the Troy, Edwardsville, Glen Carbon, Highland and Staunton fire departments and the Highland-Pierron Fire Department.
“They clearly respected each other’s input throughout the operation and made sure everyone was on board with the plan,” Mary Jo said. “The only way to get the horse back was to give him some medicine that would calm him down because if he had tried to get out on his own, he would have gone further into that pond and all that swampy ground.
“He could also have slipped on one of the boards and caused an injury that a horse normally has a hard time coming back from.”
Support for first responders
For Chris and Mary Jo, the incident and its happy ending illustrates the value of first responders of all kinds, whether for human or animal emergencies.
“There were so many people there and I tried to thank them as much as possible, but there were so many people and so many departments,” Chris said. “Ultimately, we just want to express our thanks and appreciation to everyone who came.
“It was really a sight to see when people came out to rescue that horse. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it.”
“If anyone wants to support MERS-Large Animal Rescue or the other organizations, all support is greatly appreciated,” added Mary Jo.
To donate to MERS-Large Animal Rescue, go to paypal.me/mersteam.
