MERS Responds to 2nd Call of the year on Friday, January 13th, 2012--Elsberry, Mo.

Updated at January 14, 2012 03:50

MERS received a call on Friday, January 13th, 2012 for a horse down in a pasture, just outside the barn. We received the call @ 8:50pm. MERS traveled over 83 miles to get to the scene, in Elsberry, Mo. Upon our arrival, the last mile was on an ice covered road, and the outside temperature was 9 degrees.We had 13 highly dedicated members that were available to respond.

When MERS had received the initial call, we immediately  requested that the owner call a Veterinarian to respond as well, factoring in what the owner had told us and combining that with the outside temperature. When we arrived, the Veterinarian had just arrived, as well, and had already completed some initial evaluations. Although the vitals came back normal, and the horse was full of energy, the Veterinarian was very concerned about the horse’s left front leg, and in order to do a complete evaluation on that, we needed to get the horse up. The horse had been blanketed from the time that the owner had made the initial call to MERS.

We immediately  placed our MERS Head Protector on the recumbent horse, rolled the horse over onto our long webbings, and attempted to manually lift the horse up in the frozen pasture. We had to physically hold the horse up, as the horse would not put any weight on the one particular leg. We then put the horse back down and blanketed the horse. We then resorted to putting together the MERS A-Frame specifically designed for lifting horses, and holding them in place. After we assembled this, we were required to place the downed horse onto our Rescue Glide, securely package the horse, and transported the horse approximately 100’ to the A-Frame. With our lifting equipment hooked up to the horse, we successfully lifted the horse up and into a horizontal postion. With the horse suspended in the horizontal postion, the Veterinarian made an immediate evaluation that the horse’s front left leg was broken. We slowly lowered the horse back down, and the horse had to be humanely euthanized by the Veterinarian. MERS stayed on the scene and offered whatever assistance and  condolences that we could for this very sad outcome. This was certainly not the outcome that we were hoping for. After we packed all of our equipment up, we then traveled approximately 14 miles to Troy, Mo.(on the way home) stopped at a local Gas Station where we spent a good deal of time debriefing and evaluating what we had just experienced.

The majority of MERS members are horse owners, and the majority of our call outs have great outcomes. When we work this hard in an attempt to save an animals life, and have this result, it has an effect on all of us. MERS members are all professionals—we discuss the situation, and prepare for the next call out.

We arrived back home at 2:30am, 9 degrees outside, and drove 166 miles round trip.

 

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