A trailer containing three horses slid off the road and partially overturned on Rte. 28 in Andes this afternoon, leading to a dramatic equine rescue by the Andes Fire Department, state troopers, a Delhi veterinarian, and multiple volunteers who rushed to the scene to help.
Watch a slideshow of the rescue as it unfolded -- click on the photos to read captions:
The accident happened at 1:30pm near the intersection of Gladstone Hollow Road and Rte. 28. According to witnesses at the scene, the trailer was heading west downhill when it suddenly slid across the oncoming lane and into a ditch.
Paul Steiner, the driver of the pickup truck that had been pulling the trailer, told the Watershed Post that there were no other cars were involved, and that he slid off the road.
Mary Leber, the horses' owner, was also on the scene. She said that she had been driving directly behind the trailer when the accident happened. "The next thing I knew, he was in the ditch," she said.
A light drizzle had just begun to fall when the accident happened.
Steiner said that he was unhurt in the accident. A dog that had been in the pickup with him also seemed to be unharmed.
But at first sight, the three horses looked like they might have to be euthanized. Their trailer, which had housed them standing in diagonal compartments, had landed at a 45-degree angle in the ditch. They could be heard and seen kicking and struggling before firefighters could open the door to the trailer. As responders struggled to open the trailer, two of the horses could be seen craning their necks out of the windows in the side of the trailer. One, a white male named M&M, was bleeding from the mouth.
When the door was finally opened, a grim sight awaited: A chestnut mare named Palma was flat on her side, her back legs splayed up against the wall of the trailer. Behind her, the two other horses, M&M and a bay mare named Calypso, were draped against the side of the trailer with their heads through their windows. The veterinarian who had arrived from Delhi was overheard advising Leber that one or more of the horses might have to be euthanized on the spot.
Two hours later, however, all three horses were standing in the field next to the road, able to walk, and, in Palma's case, browse a bit of hay. Responders winched the trailer out of the ditch with a crane, while the veterinarian from Delhi treated the horses. Jeff Wilson of Black Willow Morgans in Delhi directed the efforts of coaxing them onto their feet.
Wilson was one of several volunteers who rushed to the scene after hearing about the accident. One woman told the Watershed Post that she had heard about the incident on a police scanner and had immediately driven to the scene.
M&M escaped the trailer first, after jumping over and partially tramping Palma, and then the two others were rolled upright and pulled and urged into standing positions.
The animals all sustained visible bruises and cuts. In a bizarre coda to his rescue, after M&M was led away from the trailer and was standing quietly in the field, he fell to the ground in a seizure that lasted several nerve-wracking minutes. But by 3:30, all three animals were standing, which, the horse people in the crowd noted, is always a good sign.
Several drivers who saw the accident said that it seemed to happen in an instant.
"He just lost control," said Merrie Gay, who was driving westbound behind the trailer when it left the road.
"We were watching the trailer, and suddenly it was all the way over," said Connie Gilliat, who was also driving westbound into Andes when the accident occurred.
Steiner and Leber said they had been delivering the three horses from Sarasota, Florida to Leber's farm in the Delaware County town of Franklin. Leber said that their drive had begun in Kingston earlier today.
"It's going to be a long road to recovery for them now," she said.
Photos and reporting by Julia Reischel, who was driving eastbound on Rte. 28 just as the accident occurred, and was at the scene before emergency responders arrived.
