Mother horse, baby rescued from mud pit in Arizona

Yahoo

28-04-2025

April 28 (UPI) -- A group of animal lovers came together in Arizona to rescue a mother horse and a foal stuck in a deep mud pit.
Betty Nixon, of Friends of the Heber Wild Horses, said she was alerted Saturday morning to the plight of the mare and foal stuck in a pit near Heber-Overgaard.
Nixon responded with a neighbor and discovered five people already working to rescue the horses.
"When I got there, they had already pulled the foal out of the mud," Nixon told KSAZ-TV. "There was one gentleman named Andy, and he ended up being a major hero of the day because he went into that mud with no hesitation, which is kind of dangerous because you've got a wild horse that is thrashing in the mud trying to get out."
She said it took over an hour to extract the mother horse from the mud.
"We wanted to get the towrope under the torso behind the front legs, but there was no way to get the towrope underneath her under the mud and around her body," she said.
The rescuers ended up tying a rope around the mare's neck and used a rescuer's lunch bag to keep the horse's head above water while they hauled her to safety.
Nixon said the mud at U.S. Forest Service-managed watering holes has been a major problem for the wild horses lately.
"When they get low, and they get muddy, I just go out several times a day, at least three times a day, let's just say, and check them to make sure nothing's stuck in there," Nixon said.
Two horses in Herber-Overgaard couldn't make it out of a mud pit alone, and it took an entire team to save the day.
It took seven people more than an hour to pull the helpless animals free.