Creatures feature

By MARA PATTISON-SOWDEN
UPPER Yarra SES volunteers weren’t quite talking with the animals last week, but they were busy rescuing a few of the four-legged variety.
Wet conditions and small spaces don’t mix well with animals, as the volunteers discovered while rescuing a dog and a horse in two separate but demanding incidents in Yellingbo.
The horse was found to have cast itself overnight at its Correa Road property, and was stuck in a precarious situation.
The Upper Yarra SES was called out at 7.30am on Tuesday 26 June to find the horse stuck in a dip.
Upper Yarra SES volunteer Russell Wulf said the owner had checked on the horse just before midnight, but in the morning they found it wet, cold and stuck.
“As soon as I saw him I knew what the problem was,” Mr Wulf said.
“He’d wiggled 20 metres down the hill overnight and couldn’t get up out of this wallow.”
Mr Wulf said the eight volunteers had tried several different methods to free the horse.
“We put a snatch strap (wide tow rope) around him, hooked it up to a four-wheel drive, holding his head up and dragged him out,” he said.
“We were lucky the way it came out…a major side-effect of a horse being cast is that it may twist a bowel which can be fatal.”
Mr Wulf said it was surprising how long the rescue took, with the volunteers leaving just before 10am.
“It was awkward and there were trees everywhere, but once we took him out to the paddock he got up,” he said.
The owners told the volunteers they would get a veterinarian out to check the horse as a precaution.
Earlier in the week Upper Yarra volunteers were called to a different Yellingbo property just before 10pm on Sunday 24 June to find that a dog had followed a wombat into a drain, where both had become stuck.
Upper Yarra SES volunteer Michael Young said the six volunteers and the owner were still digging a hole in the early hours of the next morning trying to locate both animals.
“The owner has three dogs and all three went and chased this wombat…two got out and one got stuck,” he said.
He said the volunteers measured how far the dog was trapped in the pipe, before they began to dig a hole down to the pipe.
“Eventually after digging down to 1.3 metres by hand the animals were located,” he said.
“Then came the problem of how to make a hole in the pipe big enough for the dog and the wombat to be pulled to safety.”
He said the dog was pulled out at 2am, but the wombat decided it wasn’t going to move until it was ready – when it walked out of its own accord the next day.