Horse rescued from lorry stuck in roadside ditch
(Image credit: Verwood Fire Station)
A horse had a lucky escape after the lorry in which it was being transported came off the road and ended up in a ditch.
Yvonne Newbegin said the road in Three Legged Cross, east Dorset on which she was driving her American quarter horse Bubba last Tuesday (22 February) is a surfaced track, with a number of small potholes.
“It was one of those stupid things,” she told H&H. “One second it was this, the next it was something else.
“I got to a section that’s all potholes and thought Bubba would be so rattled; however slow you go, it’s all lumpy and bumpy. I saw a line I could take, moved over — and just fell off the edge. I went in, and immediately went down about four feet.
“I phoned the guy I’d been to see and said ‘please can you bring your tractor’. He got here and said ‘You need the fire brigade’.”
Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue crews from Verwood and Ferndown fire stations, as well as a technical rescue team from Poole, were sent to the scene.
Yvonne said Bubba’s calm temperament helped prevent what could have been serious injury.
“He was half sitting, half lying, half on the floor and half up the wall,” she said. “He had his foot jammed in the corner, so we needed a vet to sedate him so they could pull him out.
“But he just lay there; when I was waiting, he was trying to get up, and I had my hand through the window trying to touch the top of his head and talk to him, and he was fine. His temperament means he didn’t get in a panic. When the fire brigade turned up, they asked will he do this or that, and how, and I just said ‘None of the above’.
“I could see he was thinking about it; his eyes were going, and I was talking to him, and he just sat there as good as gold.”
A spokesman for the fire service told H&H that once the vehicle was brought upright, Bubba was brought out safely on a specialist animal rescue board, after which he was checked by the vet and given the all-clear.
Yvonne added that he had some rubs from when he was stuck but is otherwise fine, and has loaded happily since, and the lorry was also checked and was not damaged.
“The lorry was fine; but if I hadn’t had the welding done in January, it wouldn’t have been, it would have completely collapsed on that side,” she said. “So that big bill saved my truck – and maybe my horse.”
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