Heroes hoist horse from hole
Published: July 12, 2007
Firefighters rescued a two-day-old horse that fell into a well last Thursday afternoon at Vandecoevering Farms, where the filly quarterhorse lives with her mother Ruby.
Both horses belong to the Warstler family of Cornelius. When Michelle Warstler and her 15-year-old daughter Maliah arrived at the stables and eight acres of pastures that afternoon, they saw Ruby but no sign of the horse’s first baby, Roo.
That’s when they called the Forest Grove Fire Department around 2:40 p.m.
“Mom and baby are never separated,” said Michelle.
Seven firefighters arrived about 15 minutes later and found Maliah holding Roo’s head above a small pool of water beside a water trough shaped like a claw-foot bathtub.
“They noticed the nose of it sticking out of the well,” said the fire department’s inspector David Nemeyer.
Crews moved the trough that covered an unused cistern about five feet deep that Roo had fallen into and pulled and lifted the colt from the well, keeping it dry with towels.
“It laid there for a little bit, then it started moving on its own and the mother came over and they walked off,” Nemeyer said.
Later a veterinarian treated Roo for minor cuts and scratches and prescribed antibiotics. Farm owner Joe Vandecoevering fenced off the area and plans to fill in the hole. He said he didn’t know the well was there.
“Horses have been around it for 15 years and this has never happened,” he said. Vandecoevering thinks water from a pipe that fills the trough from a natural spring underneath the well caused ground to collapse under Roo’s legs. He said a prior owner installed the system.
Roo was named after the family’s youngest daughter Marrisa, who died years ago in an ATV accident. Ruby was her horse and Roo was Marrisa’s nickname.
“She was easy to name,” Warstler said.
Warstler said the family took Ruby last year to a family farm in Burns to breed with another full-bred quarterhorse there. Roo was born at 9:30 last Wednesday morning, a pure quarterhorse the family planned to sell for at least $6,000 because of her “good stock,” Warstler explained.
After the rescue, Warstler said the family decided to keep Roo and continue boarding her at Vandecoevering Farms, located on Hillside Road two miles north of Forest Grove.
Maliah is a freshman at Forest Grove High School and rides Redbluff, another family horse, for the equestrian team.
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