Horse Rescued After Falling Through Barn Floor and Getting Stuck: 'We Aren't Sure How This Happened'

The 8-year-old animal was safely rescued and is now "walking and trotting normally," per his owners

A horse is recovering from an intense rescue after falling through a barn floor!

On June 3, the 8-year-old Lipizzaner horse, Valcour, was standing in a barn at Linebrook Farm in Ipswich, Massachusetts, when suddenly, his hind legs fell through the stall floor.

The incident left the animal completely entrapped in the shattered floor — a photo snapped from below shows the white horse's legs dangling from the ceiling below the barn. Valcour managed to stay calm as his owners reached out for help getting him out of the floor.

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The owners called first responders and a local vet, SRH Veterinary Services, who enlisted even more assistance: a specialized team from the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) at Nevins Farm in Methuen.

"The doctor knew immediately that they needed more help—and special equipment—to free poor Valcour, so they called us," said Kaycie McCarthy, an equine and farm animal outreach and rescue manager at MSPCA's Nevins Farm.

The first responders (the Ipswich Fire Department and Northeast Massachusetts Technical Rescue Team) and animal emergency experts arrived at the scene swiftly with a mission: safely remove the entrapped horse as quickly as possible.

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After a long, intense rescue, the team could say, "Mission accomplished."

"It took about four hours and the help of everyone on the scene," McCarthy said of the rescue effort. "But we were able to get this sweet horse out with no life-threatening injuries."

The Lipizzaner horse is expected to make a full recovery. In an update shared June 5, a rep for MSPCA told PEOPLE, "Valcour's owners say he's walking and trotting normally, so it looks like he's fully recovered!"

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However, according to McCarthy, his rescuers are still unsure how the creature fell through the floor.

"There was empty space in the barn below the stall, so it's possible that the wood rotted, and that's why the floor broke," the manager added, "but the important thing is that the horse is safe."

And it was no small feat. "We work hard to train first responders on how to handle these kinds of emergencies, and they know they can call us when something comes up that they aren't able to handle," McCarthy said.

"But this is also a good example of why it's important that everyone with pets—including horses—knows what to do when emergencies happen," she added.

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