Lost horse recovered
Toolbox
STAFF REPORT - Published: October 5, 2009
SOUTH WOODSTOCK — A horse and his owner were reunited Sunday afternoon after the horse spent the weekend lost in the woods.
Searchers found Odyssey, a 16-year-old black Morgan gelding, alive and well two days after the horse ran away from his owner during a fall foliage ride on the Green Mountain Horse Association's 65-acre facility in South Woodstock.
"We had some people go into the woods with tracking dogs and they got really close, but then he just popped out of the woods," said GMHA volunteer June Hamel.
Odyssey got away from owner Eunice Froeliger of Charlotte at about 10:30 or 11 Friday morning, and headed north and west into a heavily wooded part of Calvin Coolidge State Forest, said Molly Hutchins, marketing manager for the Green Mountain Horse Association.
"He'd been fairly flighty, and she'd been nervous, and he just took off on her," Hutchins said Saturday.
Hutchins said Odyssey ran through a back field and "took off" on Route 106.
"He kept going and going and going, and he just disappeared," she said.
Searchers found tracks at the end Keeling Road, which is off Long Hill Road in South Woodstock. Hutchins said it appears the horse was headed into the state forest, which spreads over 21,500 acres in Woodstock, Bridgewater, Reading and Plymouth.
Hamel did not know how far the horse had traveled during its odyssey.
Froeliger did not return a call Sunday seeking comment.
30