Arne Petryshen
Cranbrook police had to wrangle up some escaped horses Tuesday morning as a call came in from the area near Highlands Elementary School.
The horses had somehow gotten loose from a nearby property and were seen roaming the area before RCMP were called in to round them up.
"I don't know how they got through the fence, but they got through a fence somewhere," Cranbrook RCMP Cpl. Pat Prefontaine said.
Cst. Haley Pinfold and Cpl. Rod Hrehirchuk arrived at the last known location of the horses at around 8:15 a.m. They proceeded to track the horses down. It ended up taking just over an hour to round up the two horses, thanks in part to the help of a few nearby residents with horse wrangling skills.
Beth Crawley lives in the neighbourhood and said her husband Doug noticed the horses walking down the street. When he told her about them, her first thought was to help catch them. They jumped in their truck, grabbing a couple of halters and a carrot along the way, and headed out to help find the horses.
"I knew that it would be much easier to chaperone them if they had halters on," Crawley said.
They lost sight of the horses, but down the road they came across their neighbour Brian Chore with two RCMP officers, and the two horses.
"(Brian) had arrived with some rope and they made some make-shift rope halters," she said.
The three of them had roped the horses in with the make-shift halters, though Crawley gave them the proper halters she had brought, as they fit better.
Crawley said she noticed one horse had some minor cuts on its body, so she suspected that it was the leader and had orchestrated the escape, while the other smaller horse had likely just tagged along as an accomplice.
She was happy the events had a positive ending.
The two officers took charge of the horses, and backtracked in the opposite direction to find the owners.
Prefontaine confirmed the officers identified the owners and brought the horses back home.