A routine trip along a gravel road in British Columbia turned into a dire animal rescue when a truck driver found a horse stuck on a bridge, its head wedged beneath a timber.
The encounter happened near Lytton, where local truck driver Brian Hart unexpectedly found himself trying to help the animal, as CBC reported.
What happened?
Hart noticed the horse when he was making his way toward town on a little-used gravel road at the start of his Tuesday shift, he told CBC's Radio West.
"I'm heading down this one hill to my first bridge," he said. "And I see this horse lying in the middle of the bridge."
Hart said the hoof marks and the way the animal was positioned suggested it had stumbled and fallen while coming down the hill.
"It looks like it hit the concrete on the bridge, lost its footing and somehow got its head jammed under the timber," he said.
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Upon the sight, he believed that the horse had died from its injuries. When he looked over the edge of the bridge, though, he saw that the exhausted animal was still alive.
"I looked over the edge [of the bridge] and that thing looked up at me, tongue hanging out, just exhausted," Hart said. "And it just gave me a look of, get me the hell out of here!"
Hart initially tried to pull the horse loose by its mane, but the animal got agitated and began kicking. He then turned to his truck's crane attachment and started trying to remove the bridge beam before the horse finally got free on its own.
Why does it matter?
In many rural areas, the first person to respond to an emergency is often simply whoever is nearby and willing to help.
For large animals, accidents involving roads, fences, culverts, and bridges can quickly become dangerous. In this case, the horse was trapped for so long that it became severely exhausted with little hope of escaping without assistance.
Every minute can matter when it comes to cases of trapped wildlife — such as how one dachshund was safely rescued after spending five hours trapped in an underground cavity only because of the quick response of firefighters, neighbors, and animal control officers.
What's being done?
Before the horse escaped, Hart had already tried more than one way to help, first tugging at it and then using his work equipment in an attempt to move part of the obstruction.
Even after it broke free, the horse was still in bad shape.
"It couldn't even hold his head up. It just stood there for like ten minutes looking at me," Hart said.
Eventually, the animal recovered enough to walk away on its own. "Finally it caught its breath, and just walked away," Hart explained.
Hart later described the rescue with humor, expressing how this was such an out-of-the-blue experience. "I told the boss, this was not in my job description. They didn't train me for this," he said.
He also called it "the strangest encounter of his life."
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