Champion Roping Horse Washed Away

Clayton Price rides Spud in a rodeo roping event in an undated photograph. Price has been searching for the prize-winning horse since it was swept away on Dec. 21.

 

This is a story from the USA, however, with all the recent flooding in Australia it could be relevant here and we certainly feel for this man who obviously loves his horse!

 

A former professional rodeo cowboy desperate to find a beloved horse that washed away in a flood has enlisted the help of an animal psychic.

 

Spud, a stocky reddish quarter horse with spots on its rump, was swept into the Santa Ana River on Dec. 21 when the storm caused River Trails Riding Stables in Norco to flood. Clayton Price, 42, who trains horses, has earned awards riding Spud in competition.

 

Price has searched on foot and by helicopter and had friends take photos of the thick vegetation along the river for signs of his companion.

 

With those efforts unfruitful, Price got help from a self-described "animal communicator." Her description of what Spud could see -- concrete -- led Price to jump in a boat Wednesday and row toward Prado Dam.

"I don't want to leave one stone unturned to try to find my horse," Price said Thursday by phone. "My horses are like my kids. I love 'em with all my heart. I can't even put it into words."

Lydia Hiby, of Escondido, charges $40 for a 15-minute phone session, according to her website.

 

"When you call me, I speak to you about your pet on the phone, but I am 'talking' to your pet telepathically," Hiby said on her website. "Your animal companion's name is their own personal radio frequency that I dial in like a radio wave."

 

She could not be reached by phone Thursday.

 

And she and Price kept missing each other on the phone, so Price's friend talked to her and discussed Spud.

 

From that conversation, Price said, Hiby offered that Spud was surrounded by concrete, that he was content, had injuries to his neck and a leg, and that he was not wet.

 

She didn't say whether Spud was alive or give a specific location, Price said.

 

Price boarded the rowboat Wednesday with friends and headed toward the dam. But in three hours, they made it only as far as River Road, and by then it was dark.

 

The vegetation was so thick, he said, that Spud "could be 10 feet away from you, and I wouldn't know he is there."

 

The river itself offered challenges. "You might float for 30 or 40 feet and you might hit a sand bank and you would push the boat and you might hit deep water ... and then you would hit a sand bank again," Price said. "We were wore out."

 

Price said he eventually will try to search the dam area. He spent Thursday searching the river bottom on foot near Corona Municipal Airport.

 

Price has spent his life around horses. He was one of the child cowboys to appear in a serial called "The Mystery of Rustler's Cave" that ran on the 1970s remake of the "Mickey Mouse Club."

 

Price attended Norco and Bloomington high schools and competed in rodeo in high school and college. He won a state championship in saddle bronc riding in the early 1990s. He has worked as a stunt man, was a horse-training instructor and rodeo coach at Cal Poly Pomona and a horse-training instructor at Mt. San Antonio College.

 

story: www.pe.com