IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Learn how horses naturally respond to various emergency scenarios so you can better understand how to approach and handle your horse if you're ever in an emergency situation.

- REBECCA HUSTED, JENNIFER VON GELDERN

IF you live a life with horses, you'll likely encounter emergency situations over the years. Those emergencies can be caused by weather extremes or natural disasters, such as flooding, fires, and tornadoes. Or they can be of our own making, like a trailering emergency or even riding in unknown or tricky terrain.

Knowing some typical equine reactions to various emergency scenarios, as well as how to approach and handle horses in those situations, may well save you and your horse from injury (or further injury beyond what may have already been incurred) or even death. Here we examine some types of emergency situations that we and our horses may find ourselves in, and give you some pointers for what to do and what not to do.

ENTRAPPED HORSE

THE EMERGENCY: A horse may become entrapped by being ridden into a situation where the rider doesn't realize there's a hole or mud, or by his own curiosity, playfulness, or inattention in a panic. Sometimes a horse may try to self-treat for warm hooves (from sickness, founder, arthritis, etc.) and simply be overwhelmed by mud, too deep in a trench to get himself back out. A tornado or windstorm may trap a horse under debris, such as tree limbs, fence wires, or fallen barn parts. Other entrapments involve horse trailers-a horse may fall or collapse inside a trailer and be wedged inside or, in the case of a road accident, may be pinned under other fallen horses.