Sep 2, 2008 10:27 pm US/Eastern
Firefighters Come To Rescue Of Aging Horse
NORTH READING (WBZ) ―
Audrey Zwicker couldn't hide the tears as she draped her arms around her good friend's neck and gave him a kiss.
It's a big neck.
Her buddy is an 800-pound horse named Snapper, who means the world to her.
"He's just really, really good because you can trust him," she said. "He takes care of anybody who gets on his back. If you never rode before, I'd just put you on this horse's back and he'd take care of you."
But Tuesday morning, it was a dozen North Reading firefighters who had to take care of Snapper. They were summoned to his barn on Duane Drive after the 31-year-old horse got his aging legs wedged against the stall overnight and couldn't get up despite his repeated struggles to do so.
"It's a big horse – kicking and thrashing around," said Deputy Fire Chief Bill Warnock, who could only recall a couple of similar episodes in the last 20 years. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."
To get such a large animal up safely in such a tight space, the fire department's rope rescue teams rigged four lines to a pulley, hanging from a hole drilled through the ceiling. For nearly three hours the firefighters tied and tugged, until they finally hoisted Snapper onto all four hooves.
Even the fabled "cat stuck in a tree" rescue couldn't match this.
"They actually gave him oxygen when he got weak," marveled barn owner Diane Downey. "They put the tube down his nose and gave him oxygen and Gatorade."
Snapper loves Gatorade, often thumbing his nose at offers of water.
Perhaps he gets special treatment because of his famous past. He's a former jumping champ, who caught the eye of a well known equine photographer back in his glory days. As a result, Snapper is now featured on a mural at the Kentucky Horse Park in the heart of thoroughbred country.
But that was then.
Now, he's an aging, arthritic horse, and his owner knows she can't keep asking the fire department to bail her out.
"There's going to come a time – and it might not be far off – when I'll have to let go," Zwicker lamented. "When his quality of life is not there anymore, I'll have to do what's best for him."
That day wasn't Tuesday, though. Snapper's face was scraped and scuffed from his ordeal in the stall. But the veterinarian took care of that.
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