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There was no sign of danger as Dakota and Sedona carried their riders toward a wooden bridge along the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River in Washington state earlier this month.
The two horses and their riders, Dawn DeFreece and Pascal Worrell, had crossed the same bridge without issue earlier in the afternoon on Aug. 12 at the start of their five-mile trail ride. A few hours later, they were on the way back and a half-mile from the trailhead and parking lot where DeFreece, the horses’ owner, would load them into a trailer to take them home.
Dakota, carrying Worrell, stepped on the bridge first. A few feet in, she stumbled, and when she stuck out a hind leg to catch herself, it punched through the bridge, opening a hole that soon swallowed her hindquarters.
It was the beginning of a six-hour rescue effort in which 33 emergency workers raced into Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest to free Dakota from the bridge before it collapsed and she fell some 15 feet onto the rocks below.
“It was a nightmare,” DeFreece, 60, told The Washington Post.
The afternoon started off more like a dream. DeFreece and Worrell arrived at the trailhead around 1 p.m. At the start of their outbound leg, they crossed the roughly 40-foot wooden bridge that spans an offshoot creek of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River. The skies were clear. The weather was warm but not hot. The horses plodded along the Pratt trail as their riders took in beautiful vistas of the river and mountains around them. DeFreece would later describe the experience as “perfect.”
Then, on their way back, they came upon the wooden bridge around 5 p.m. when they were starting the half-mile home stretch to the parking lot at the trailhead. After Dakota fell through the bridge, she flailed wildly to free herself.
“It was horrible,” DeFreece said. “She just kept struggling and trying to get out.”
As bad as it was, DeFreece and Worrell feared the situation could get worse. They were scared that more of the bridge might crumble under Dakota’s 1,200 pounds, causing the horse to fall some 15 feet onto the rocks below.
“It definitely would have killed her, but it would have been a very slow, miserable death,” Worrell said.
Without cell service, DeFreece ran on the trail toward the parking lot trying to find an opening in the tree canopy. Finally, she got an “SOS” signal, meaning that she had spotty service but could call 911. So that’s what she did. Twice she got a dispatcher on the line, only to have the call drop as she tried to explain what had happened. On the third, she rattled off the most important information — they were on the Pratt trail in Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, their horse had fallen through a bridge and was stuck, and they needed a search-and-rescue team to free her.
Then DeFreece returned to the bridge, where her friend had stayed to keep Dakota calm so she wouldn’t thrash about and injure herself further.
At 6 p.m., the first rescuers arrived, but the King County Search and Rescue Association personnel were only qualified to save humans, not large animals, said Michaela Eaves, spokesperson for the Washington State Animal Response Team, which led the effort to rescue Dakota. Still, they started climbing trees to set up a highline, a rope-and-pulley system, to lift Dakota, Eaves said. At 7:30, a crew from the response team arrived, and about 15 minutes later, rescuers finished setting up the highline, she said.
Then they waited. They needed a veterinarian to examine Dakota’s injuries and inject her with a sedative to prevent her from trying to “self-rescue with no warning” by flailing around, Eaves said. About 9:30, the vet, Dana Westerman, arrived and sedated her, she added. Once the drug took effect some 20 minutes later, rescuers squeezed two slings under Dakota’s body, hoisted her out of the hole and set her down on a stable part of the bridge, according to Eaves. They did so gradually to make sure that, despite her injuries, she could support her weight.
By 10:30, the horse was walking the trail’s final half-mile to the parking lot, where Westerman spent several hours treating her injuries, which consisted of cuts, extensive scrapes and a lot of swelling, Eaves said.
“Her legs were all banged up,” DeFreece said.
The next few days were touch-and-go, she added. At one point, Westerman told DeFreece that she doesn’t often come across horses with such severe injuries and warned that they might have to put Dakota down.
Instead, she rallied and continues to heal. But the prolonged swelling and other physical trauma damaged her skin so much that it’s been sloughing off in the days since the incident. DeFreece said Westerman is treating her like a burn patient.
“Her injuries were life threatening but she has been a fighter,” DeFreece wrote in an account of what happened.
DeFreece now expects Dakota to make a full recovery, or close to it. She started a GoFundMe campaign to cover the horse’s medical costs and has raised more than $9,600 of the $25,000 goal.
DeFreece said that some might wonder why she didn’t “put her out of her misery.”
That was never an option, not after what they’ve been through, she wrote in the fundraiser. Dakota, a tri-colored paint quarter horse, was born on DeFreece’s property 17 years ago, and they’ve been together ever since, she told The Post. DeFreece described her as “very easygoing … the horse I can put anybody on and can trust.” After official training as a filly, Dakota served as a search-and-rescue horse for about 12 years, helping officials find hikers lost in the woods and law enforcement search large crime scenes.
Dakota “helped save many lives with her hundreds of hours and many years dedicated to rescuing others with missions and training, all to be there for others when they needed it,” DeFreece wrote.
“Now she needed us,” she added, “and we were not going to let her down.”
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/24/horse-bridge-stuck-rescue-washington/