Exhausted horse was stranded in Yellowstone River for days. See the rescue
A horse spent days trapped in the middle of a raging river in Montana, catching the attention of residents until it was finally rescued, officials said.
The senior horse, named Cowboy, had gone missing from its home a couple of miles from the river on Tuesday, May 13, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder told McClatchy News over the phone.
Then someone who lives along the river noticed the horse standing in water below its knees in the middle of the Yellowstone River the following Thursday night, Linder said. It was stranded on a gravel bar between two islands with rushing water surrounding it on all sides, and it wouldn’t budge, he said.
Video shared to Facebook shows the horse standing still in the shallow water.
“This poor horse in the middle of the river,” Jessica Garza said in a May 15 post on Facebook. “Looks like it was trying to cross and now it’s stuck. It’s been standing out here for hours….The river is so high….You can just tell it’s tired.”
Someone in the video suggests that the water is likely freezing.
Rather than trying to get boats on the river at night, Linder decided to have deputies go out first thing the next morning. Deputies managed to fasten a halter around its head, and “with that and a bucket of senior feed, were able to coax it onto the island,” Linder said.
“From there we were surrounded with fast moving water so we couldn’t just lead it across,” he said. “You could tell it was pretty sore and had a couple knicks and bruises.”
So the department gave the horse a light sedative and brought in the rescue helicopter to hoist the 25-year-old animal off the island and back onto the riverbank.
Tracy Linder, the sheriff’s wife, shared the video to her Facebook page.
Cowboy flails his legs a bit as the helicopter lifts him off the ground and flies over the river with him hanging below it.
Several people commented that they were glad to see the happy ending after worrying about the horse for several days.
“Amazing! Poor guy had to be terrified,” someone said in the comments. “I hope he’s recovering.”
A photo posted in a Facebook group for lost and found pets in the Billings area showed Cowboy reuniting with his owners as one of them hugs his neck.
“I did not sleep last night worrying about this poor babe... my heart is so happy hearing of this outcome,” one person commented.
