Horse vanished in national park for week — then visitor finds him roaming by SD highway

A horse roamed a national park in South Dakota for an entire week before a visitor spotted him wandering along the highway near a trailhead.

Finley the horse vanished from his owner’s campsite in Wind Cave National Park on Tuesday, May 2, his owner Gin Szagola said on Facebook. The pair are about a year into a cross-country trip from New Jersey to Oregon.

Szagola had secured Finley to her location using a 50-foot tether attached to a picket in the ground, and she worried he could be dragging the contraption behind him, which could trap him around a tree or another object and cut him off from accessing water.

“I’m heartbroken that this has happened,” Szagola said in a post on Facebook after he went missing. “Finley is my best friend and my partner. He is my life.”

Szagola had been searching for Finley on horseback and on foot from sunrise to sunset and often after dark, according to her post.

Search and rescue teams with the Civil Air Patrol had been searching the park by air, but still there was no sign of the 5-year-old gelding.

The National Park Service had called off its search over the weekend, Szagola said on Facebook. And she had begun to lose hope of finding her beloved horse alive.

“While I have been trying to hold onto hope, after all this time I had begun to fear the worst,” she said in a May 9 post after Finley was found. “Last night the last thing I did was drive the perimeter of the park looking for vultures.”

But then she got an early morning call from someone who had spotted Finley wandering along Highway 385 near the Wind Cave Canyon Trailhead, according to Szagola and the National Park Service.

Park rangers spotted Finley there along the highway — and he appeared to be in pretty good shape for having spent a week in the backcountry, officials said in a news release.

They led him into the park’s maintenance yard, where Szagola reunited with her horse and arranged veterinary attention for him. He was dehydrated and his right rear leg was scraped up, but he was otherwise in good health, she said.

Park officials shared a photo of the reunion. They both look exhausted — and Szagola looks relieved to be by her horse’s side again.

Finley must have felt the same way, someone shared in the comments.

“Beyond wonderful reunion,” said someone who shared a photo of the pair relaxing in a pasture together. “They are so happy to be back together. He laid down beside her and fell asleep.”

In a statement, Wind Cave National Park’s superintendent Leigh Welling thanked all who helped in the search, “especially the Custer County Sheriff’s Office, Custer County Search and Rescue, Custer State Park, the South Dakota Wing of the Civil Air Patrol and the numerous people who on their own were looking for the horse.”

After all, “it was park visitors who spotted him” and called his location in, Szagola said on Facebook.

She also thanked park officials, the search and rescue teams, and everyone else who had helped search for the horse.

“Your (efforts) to find him have been incredible. Just amazing,” she said on Facebook. “It has saved his life. I’m just at a loss for words, overwhelmed with relief that he is safe.”

Szagola said they’ll spend as much time as he needs resting and recuperating.

“He is now safe and happy relaxing in a pasture,” she said. “Just now he lied down next to me and rested his head in my lap after many sleepless nights.”

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