It took more than 35 people to extract a 1,600-pound Hanoverian from a creek yesterday morning (June 6) near Orlando, Fla. The 17.1-hand gelding had been trapped in the 25-foot-wide miry creek with slippery banks for at least three hours when he was found.

Rex, an 8- to 10-year-old chestnut dressage horse and jumper, escaped from his paddock at William Equestrian boarding/training facility sometime before dawn on June 6. When the owner of the farm found Rex in his predicament at 7:00 a.m., he called Cristina Arellano, DVM, of Orlando Equine Veterinary Care.

“When the barn was closed up the night before he was in a paddock, and the next morning, he wasn’t,” said Arellano, who says she thinks the gate latch was broken. “The other horse that was in his paddock stayed up near the barn. We think (Rex) ran onto the rickety old bridge, spooked, and jumped into the creek thinking it was solid ground.” The creek was filled with weeds that were several feet high, possibly disguising the water’s surface.

“The bank was really high and it was pure, really slick muck; he couldn’t get his legs out,” said Arellano. When she arrived, Rex’s head and a third of his neck were out of the water. “Once I saw how deep the bank was, and that he wasn’t trying (to extricate himself), I said, ‘That’s it, we’re calling the fire department.’ The banks were muck. When I got in to try to put a rope around his thorax, I sunk up to my waist in the mud