Remember how, in Part Four of the Riding Virtual Shotgun blog post I had to take a webcam break on New Year’s Day because of a major problem with Ricky, one of the horses we board here? Well, this time I’m going to write about that scary experience.

As I wrote before, I went into the kitchen and decided to take some photos from our lānai across the pasture, but I saw something down there that looked alarming. I got the binoculars out, and sure enough, Ricky was lying still as could be down at the bottom of the pasture. OMG. I thought he was dead.

I called to Nolemana, and we hurried down the driveway. Ricky hadn’t moved, and I was terrified. It was below freezing, too, and there was snow and ice all around.

This is the sight that greeted us when we got there. Ho da scary, yeah? My adrenaline level and blood pressure must’ve been off the charts.  Ricky is over thirty years old, but I wasn’t expecting him to die.  His friend, Miss Beatrice, stood nearby, guarding him.

I immediately called Joan, his owner, told her what we saw, and asked her (actually, I think I told her) to get over here right away. She lives about fifteen minutes away and promised to come immediately. I told her that I’d seen Ricky breathing, so we knew he wasn’t dead. What a relief!  Joan suggested that I get our neighbors, Tina, and her son, Blaine, to come help till she could get there. Nolemana went over to their house to get help; since it was early, we felt bad about waking them up, but Nolemana couldn’t manage Ricky by himself.

It looked like Ricky had gotten tangled up in some wire and couldn’t move.

As Tina and Blaine were getting dressed, Nolemana and I drove up the driveway so that he could get the wire cutters, then we hurried back down again. Tina and Blaine were in the pasture with their own set of wire cutters.

Tina tried to calm Ricky down while Blaine worked the wire cutters; there was nothing that I could do to help, so I stayed in the car and took photos.

Miss Beatrice, who sees herself as Ricky’s mama, wouldn’t leave.

It looked like Ricky was hopelessly tangled up.

Joan arrived; she was so worried about her boy.

She talked to Ricky, letting him know she was there. It took some time to figure out the best way to extricate Ricky. He was lying still as could be. Joan tried pushing on his side to see if she could get him to stand up.

It was really, really, cold, and that made us even more worried about Ricky.  We didn’t know how long he’d be lying there.

Part Two coming up.