A yearling quarter-horse was rescued from a deep, muddy creek bed off Welcome Grove Road by volunteers from the Greeneville Emergency & Rescue Squad on Monday night.

Kevin Ayers, a Rescue Squad volunteer who recently completed a class in large animal rescue operations, said the horse, which was named Diva and was owned by Sherri Arnold, apparently had fallen about 10 feet down the steep embankment to the bottom of the creek bed.

"I don't know how the owner found it," Ayers said.

He noted that the location where the horse was trapped was surrounded by "briars and undergrowth."

Ayers said the scene to which seven Rescue Squad volunteers responded about 8 p.m. Monday was about a mile off Welcome Grove Road outside Mosheim.

There, he said, they found the young horse leaning against an embankment in the 10-foot-deep creek bed. "There was some water in it, not a lot," Ayers said.

He said it was unclear how long the horse had been trapped before its owner found it.

"The owners had worked to try to get it out without success," Ayers said.

He noted that Rescue Squad Capt. Jon Waddell was contacted by the sheriff's department on Monday evening about the horse's plight.

Ayers, who recently attended a large-animal rescue course in Kentucky, said he was pleased to be able to put into practice some of the things he learned during the class.

He said that in order to free the horse from the deep ravine, Rescue Squad personnel placed large straps around the horse's body and connected them to a winch on a Rescue Squad Jeep.

Using the winch, he said, Rescue Squad volunteers were able to pull the horse to safety.

"Unlike rope, straps won't cut into an animal's body," Ayers said, noting that a short time after her rescue, Diva was nibbling grass and walking around the pasture.

Ayers also said Diva and several other horses with whom she shared a pasture were moved away from the creek bed after the rescue was completed about 9 p.m. Monday.

"We got it way away from the creek bed so it couldn't get back down in there again," Ayers said.

A total of seven Rescue Squad volunteers took part in the rescue, Ayers said.