Horse reunited with owner after being rescued from flooded creek
By Noel Brennan
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MARENGO, Illinois (WBBM) — From flood victim to star of the show; one horse in McHenry County is having one heck of a week after dozens of rescuers saved his life over the weekend.
About 45 people were involved in the horse’s rescue on Friday, who was suffering from significant hypothermia after he was pulled out of the water.
On Wednesday, he was munching hay and enjoying life after being reunited with his owner, Ashley Beaulieu, who was beyond grateful to have Troy back home.
“He beat hypothermia, so that’s the most important part,” she said.
Troy has come a long way since this past weekend.
“I think that day he was so close to giving up so many times, but he pulled through,” Beaulieu said of the day she nearly lost Troy.
As storms passed through on Friday, Coon Creek overflowed its banks. Troy, a 20-year-old Appaloosa, was swept away in the floodwaters.
“With the storms, everything started to flood,” Beaulieu said. “The water was, like, very mucky. It was deep and it had a really strong current.”
Firefighters found him stranded in chest-deep cold water about 200 yards from the nearest shore.
“It’s just really hard to see something suffering and your instinct is to want to help it, and you can’t just jump in and help him,” Beaulieu said.
Beaulieu couldn’t jump in, but rescue teams did, along with a local veterinarian, using a boat to reach troy. The vet, worried about severe hypothermia, got to work right away.
“He’s a big horse. I didn’t know whether or not he swallowed water. I mean, he went down the river. He didn’t walk to the other side of there, right?” said Dr. Nicky Wessel, with Cutting Edge Equine Veterinary Services. “I took a bunch of hot water over, a bunch of medication, a bunch of hay in order to keep him quiet and calm and assess how he was doing.”
Rescuers built a raft system to safely move Troy across the flooded creek. From the water, it was straight to the animal hospital, where he stayed until he went back home on Wednesday.
“We had everybody here trying to help Troy,” Beaulieu said.
Wessel said Troy looks great and he certainly smells better than he did when she met him in mucky water over the weekend. She also said Troy is one tough horse.
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