First Responders Learn Large Animal Rescue [VIDEO]

First responders from Green Village, New Vernon and Madison gathered on a New Vernon farm Saturday to learn about large animal rescue.

The Harding Township/Green Village Bridle Path Association sponsored a training day by Brooke Vrany, assistand director of the Days End Farm Horse Rescue in Maryland. Vrany and fellow Days End employee David Bread brought a mare, Cadence, and a prop horse called Pegasus for the training.

New Vernon First Aid Squad members said there are approximately 300 horses in the area, and local first responders have been called to a horse rescue at least once in the last 18 months.

In August 2010, Green Village resident Mare Olsen noticed her mare had fallen into a ditch along one side of her property. "She couldn't lift herself up," Olsen said. After she and her husband tried to rescue the horse themselves, they called 9-1-1.

Madison, New Vernon and all responded, according to Olsen, along with police. They used a hose to cool down the horse, Lyra, in the August heat. "Someone had the idea to enlarge the ditch," Olsen said, so a backhoe was used to dig dirt out from under the horse.

"Still she couldn't get up," Olsen said. "So New Vernon had these inflatable pillows. They put one under her hips and one under her chest. Those got her prone, and then she got up by herself and climbed out of that ditch." The rescue ended successfully, with no injuries to the responders nor to Lyra.

Chip Del Coro, the vice president of the Green Village Fire Department, said the department had never done a rescue like it before. "Nobody knew how to get a horse up with a sling," he said. "Mare found an organization in Maryland where this is what they do, teach first responders how to deal with a horse."

Olsen said she was "so grateful, I thought other horses deserve something." She approached the Bridle Path Association about sponsoring the large animal rescue training.

Association President Ingrid Olsen, Mare's daughter, and member Jamie Miller, who helped in the 2010 rescue, agreed to bring the instructors from Days End to a Harding farm for the training. All three attended the event, along with other members of the Green Village, Madison and New Vernon Fire Departments and the New Vernon First Aid Squad.

Part of the training involved learning how to make a makeshift harness from rope and using fire truck ladders as lifts.

After her horse's rescue, Olsen said "you realize that despite thinking we're independent, something like this reminds us that we're all interdependent, we really are. We're always relying on people who know a little more than we do, have a little better equipment."