Emergency responders act to save horse

What do you do when your horse gets stuck in a river? That’s the peculiar problem Megan Mazzola found herself facing when Nova, her eight year old Spotted Draft, became mired in the flood swollen banks of the Chestatee last week.
“We’ve been up here for over 30 years, and we’ve always had animals: chickens, cows, horses, donkeys in this pasture,” she said. “And we’ve never had anything like this happen.”
When Mazzola’s efforts to coax Nova out of the river failed, she decided they needed help.
“Usually I can take care of stuff like this myself,” she said. “But we had worked on her for about an hour and a half before I started making phone calls. …The water was moving so fast and was so high, she wasn’t able to get out. It got to the point where she was so exhausted that it took everything we had to hold her head above water because she collapsed.”
With Nova sinking into the mud Mazzola made the call to the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office.
“I received the call from the horse owner,” said Lt. Alan Roach. “She used to work in the Sheriff’s Office, years ago...She reached out wanting help...I know about the public safety side of things, but nothing about horse rescue. I reached out to the sheriff who knows a lot about horses.
After conferring, the two of them then decided to put in a call to Lumpkin County Emergency Services.
“We decided to call the fire chief and see if he had the equipment for a horse rescue...he put us in touch with one of his employees that had a contact with the Equine Rescue Team in Cherokee County,” said Roach.
This was the start of the multi-agency effort to save Nova as Cherokee Equine Rescue teamed up with Keith Allen of Rider Transport and Towing to lift the horse from the river.

HORSE HEROICS

“We received a call from the Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Department,” said Allen “They had called Cherokee Emergency Services’ Equine Division to bring the spreader bar out to lift the horse and they needed a truck out there that could lift a horse up out of the river. They contacted us because we’ve got a big rotator. We could swing the big boom out over the creek and hook onto the spreader bar and lift her out.
Believe it or not, for Allen, the rescue wasn’t his first.
“I lived in Florida for 10 years and worked for a heavy wrecker service,” he said. “I had the opportunity of doing it before, so I was familiar with lifting animals to be able to  break the suction loose between the horse and the river before we lifted it. If we lifted too fast, we could do damage to the animal.”
Nova didn’t need any sedating to be lifted, as she was already tired from the ordeal.
Mazzola estimated that she had been in the river since about 10:30 the previous night, and she was freed at about 3:30 pm that day.
“My mom said she’d heard him whinnying last night about 10:30, so we think she’d been in the river all night,” she said.
After over 12 hours in the water, Nova’s legs had fallen asleep, which made putting her on the ground a bit trickier.
“Once we got her out, we set her down a couple of times,” said Allen. “She wasn’t putting anything on her legs…So we lifted her back up and kept touching her down a few times...Once she got the feeling back in her legs, the Fire Department clicked release and the owner had her on a lead and she just walked her off.”
As for how Nova got in the river, Mazzola’s not sure.
“She either lost footing getting too close to the river, or we think she could have spooked and took off,” she said. “One side of our pasture is just river...If I had to guess I think she lost footing. She’s a big horse and she slipped and just ended up down in there. With all this rain we’ve had, things are pretty soft.
Mazzola says Nova is tired from her ordeal, but otherwise seems to be in good condition.
“She’s sore and tired,” said Mazzola. “But she seems to be okay.”