Mr. Hank the horse fell in a hole, and a Colorado community rallied to get him out

When Mr. Hank the horse fell in a hole, the whole of Grand Junction pulled together to get him out.

On Tuesday night, the 18-year-old horse ate his dinner at his Grand Junction home and all was well. But by Wednesday morning he was stuck in a hole.

Really stuck.

So stuck that firefighters from two different departments were called to the scene — a field near 2252 I 1/4 Road in Grand Junction — just after 7 a.m. Wednesday morning.

The firefighters from the Grand Junction Fire Department and the Lower Valley Fire District found a mud-covered Mr. Hank with his rear end down a narrow cement culvert. Only his head, neck and front legs were above ground.

They started making calls. First, to a Fruita veterinarian, who jumped in a car and hurried to the scene. Then, to a Grand Junction sign company, to see about its 65-foot crane.

“I was at home this morning drinking my coffee, you know how it goes, and I get a phone call from one of my buddies, and he says to me, ‘I got a weird question for you,'” said Mike Blackwelder of Legacy Sign and Neon.

He’s never before used the crane to lift a live animal — though there was, for a time, a 10-foot-by-15-foot statute of a cow in front of a restaurant in town that was tipped over by scoundrels every other year or so. He’d regularly been called on to set that upright.

On Wednesday, Blackwelder arrived at the culvert to find the veterinarian, Bob Bessert of Desert Spring Veterinary Services, already at Mr. Hank’s side. Bessert was very concerned. Horses are meant to be on all fours, not stuck on their rear ends in a cement culvert. Mr. Hank was in serious danger.

“When you first get there and see what has happened, you don’t get that happy feeling,” Bessert said. “It’s like, ‘Okay we got to get him out of here.'”

The firefighters managed to rig up a harness around Mr. Hank. Bessert sedated the horse, and by the time Blackwelder rolled up with the crane — which can lift 6,000 pounds — all that was left to do was hook Mr. Hank up and start lifting.

“We got our crane all set up and hooked up to the horse and lifted it out and over to the road,” Blackwelder said. “Five minutes later the horse stood up and was perfectly fine.”

Dirk Clingman, public information officer for Grand Junction Fire Department, said the entire rescue took about two hours.

“It was really a community effort,” he said. “…The logistics of it were particularly tricky and we’re grateful it worked out.”

Bessert said Mr. Hank was still doing well on Wednesday night.

“If he would have been in there any longer, he would have gone into shock and certainly died at that point in time. There’s no doubt about that,” Bessert said. “…I’ll be following up on him, but obviously this story has a happy ending.”

On the day before Thanksgiving, a horse rescue is something to be thankful for, Blackwelder said.

“It was pretty cool,” he said. “Mainly because of Thanksgiving tomorrow, and the horse lived. It was just like that feel-good story for the day.”