SOUTHAMPTON — A horse can go up stairs, but it’s not easy to get it to go back down.
On Wednesday, it took a team effort to get Peg Burgess’s horse Levi down from the second floor of the barn at her Southampton home.
“I don’t know what possessed him to go up there,” Burgess said.
Around 15 people came out to help get Levi down the stairs and out of the barn. The rescuers included Burgess’s friends, a veterinarian, Southampton firefighters and police officers and responders from the Westhampton Fire Department, who supplied rescue equipment.
There wasn’t anything on the second floor a horse would want, Burgess said. No hay to nibble on. Just an empty space with some extra pieces of plywood.
Burgess suspects Levi slipped through a section of the electric fence that was open, nudged open the barn’s sliding doors, shimmied through bushels of hay and got caught in a corner between the hay and the stairs leading to the second level.
Burgess first attempted to get the horse down the stairs herself, but was not successful. Levi had been in the barn overnight and she was worried about her horse in a confined space. Burgess is a veterinarian for small animals such as dogs and cats, but needed to call in a veterinarian specializing in large animals.
As she waited for emergency responders and her veterinarian on Wednesday, Burgess hosed Levi with water to keep him from overheating in the 90-degree weather.
Westhampton EMT Maryanne Duggan and her husband Brian, the former Northampton fire chief who is now a volunteer firefighter for Westhampton, came to the scene with special equipment for large animal rescue.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a horse climb stairs,” Maryanne Duggan said.
Emergency responders shackled the horse’s legs together, laid it down on the slide and created a “horse taco” with the straps, according to Duggan.
Once the horse was tranquilized, they had about 20 minutes before he would wake.
The railing was removed from the stairs and responders carefully slid the 900-pound horse down the stairs.
“I’ve never had to slide a horse down from upstairs before,” Southampton Fire Chief John Workman said.
Maryanne Duggan said once the horse was tranquilized, it was “down those stairs and out in no time.”
“They did a great job,” Burgess said.
The effort was a success in part because of the Westhampton Fire Department’s large animal rescue equipment. In 2014, Maryanne Duggan and Williamsburg firefighter Robin Merritt started an initiative to raise money for the equipment and training.
About three or four years ago, Duggan, who owns several horses, responded to a call for a downed horse that had slipped on ice. But the horse didn’t make it. If they had the proper equipment, the horse may have survived, Duggan said.
Duggan said she and her husband were concerned. She worried: what if the same situation happened to one of her horses? She said they now have about $5,000 worth of equipment to help them hoist, pull or slide horses when they are in danger. She aims to have Westhampton firefighters trained for horse and large animal rescue in the near future.
Many people do not know they can call 911 for an animal, Duggan said, and she wants to spread the word that the local fire department can help an animal in need.
“911 is not just for people,” she said.
Caitlin Ashworth can be reached at cashworth@gazettenet.com.