One of the things I learned while being certified in Large Animal Rescue: Us horse owners are often more hindrance than help in a large animal emergency of the technical sort.
Take the dramatic rescue of two horses who fell through the ice recently:
Had the caring but unqualified owners tried to save them, horses and humans may not have made it.
But this local fire department had just trained in their ice rescue procedures. They had the equipment and the expertise to save them. Click for story and great gallery of photos.
Thankfully, the horses are doing fine now. (Even more heart-warming: these are therapy horses, used to help troubled adolescents.)
But not all horse-meets-icy-pond stories end this way. Three other horses recently drowned. Dr. Rebecca Gimenez offered this column, urging planning and precautions: Click here.
As owners, our most important tasks are to keep our animals safe with preventative measures (like fencing off the pond) and staying out of the way if and when expert help arrives.