Horses on Ice
It would seem that horses on frozen lakes are not a good idea. (Well, people on frozen lakes are not a good idea either, but at least rescuers are more likely to be able to drag people out if you should fall through the ice.)
The following video show one such rescue of a horse that fell through a frozen pond. I found it quite nail-biting to watch, so for the sake of my horse-loving readers, I’ll give a spoiler: it all ends well.
Untamed and Uncut - Horse Gets Trapped Under Ice
The poor horse is in visible distress. Every time she does manage to wrestle her forequarters onto solid ice, the ice just cracked right out from underneath her and the she was dunked back into the frozen water. That seemed to make the horse just despair and dismay; at times she seemed ready to give up and die.
I find the technique the firemen used to traverse the ice fascinating: the laid down lots of ladders flat on the ice, then walked on the rungs of the ladders, instead of on the ice. In that way, the ladders become a giant snowshoe spreading their weight. I wonder of this is a common trick for ice rescues?
However, the firemen seemed obviously ill-prepared for the sheer size of the horse, and although they did manage to rescue her in the end, the way the handled her seemed very ill-prepared. It just seems wrong to try and haul a horse’s entire weight by a lasso around her neck.
It seems the firemen needed some Technical Large Animal Rescue training:
Trained horse demonstrating how to be rescued
But the following photo just puzzlez me:
This looks like something that would have the SPCA on your case
I can understand that rescuers will often only be able to use a less-ideal technique for harnessing a horse, but is the demonstrated technique really a viable way for dragging a horse by its tail? Or am I missing the purpose?
The whole thing of “horses falling through ice” seems to happen fairly regularly: