With its first year anniversary approaching this month, Kentucky Large Animal Emergency Response Team (KLAER), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, has received a grant for $10,000 from the Kentucky Horse Council to pursue its goal in providing emergency response to horses and other large animals involved in situations causing pain, serious injury or even death. Typical incidents include trailer accidents on the highway; falling into sink holes and wells, getting stuck in the mud or water, falling off cliffs during trail rides, etc. In many of these situations, owners or other lay people place themselves in harms way to attempt a rescue, thus becoming a victim themselves.

Therefore, KLAER’s mission involves helping save lives of both humans and animals.

KLAER is comprised of a membership of highly trained veterinarians, firefighters and people involved in the horse industry that have been certified in technical large animal emergency response. This group of dedicated volunteers is on call 24 hours a day, seven days of the week.

“We are very grateful and thrilled about this most generous grant,” said KLAER President LaTonna Wilson, Director of Public Relations and Marketing at Rood & Riddle Veterinary Pharmacy. “It will enable us to purchase additional emergency equipment and supplies necessary in responding to emergencies, and it will give us the opportunity to provide future training to additional individuals. It’s comforting to know so many people in our state of Kentucky care about helping horses and other large animals.”

KLAER is comprised of two types of membership.

Active membership: Individuals interested in volunteering their time by actively responding to emergencies when deployed. There is no membership fee. Completion of KLAER’s Large Animal Emergency Response Course, 16 hours of rope rescue and four hours of incident command training are the requirements for active participation. All those interested may join as an active member and begin training at monthly meetings, but will not be called out for active response until these requirements have been met.

KLAER instructors coordinate training sessions that provide responders the opportunity to learn more about large animal emergency rescue with hands-on discussions and demonstrations involving emergency rope and rescue equipment and basic rescue knots. They also cover deployment procedures when emergency calls come in. For more information on training dates and locations, contact LaTonna Wilson at [email protected].

Supporting membership: This is for interested individuals who would like to be supportive of KLAER’s efforts, but not interested in actively responding. The membership fee is $35 per year, and all members will receive a KLAER Supporting Member decal and be welcome to attend monthly training meetings and special events and demonstrations.

When an emergency occurs, the best thing for the public to do is call 911. Typically, 911 will dispatch a local fire department to such incidents. If they do not have the knowledge, manpower or equipment, they may contact State Emergency Management and request the assistance of KLAER. A KLAER volunteer response team will be deployed immediately to the site of the incident.

For more information on KLAER and the services it provides in helping horses and other large animals, please visit the website at www.kyanimalresponse.org or contact LaTonna Wilson at [email protected] or (859) 983-2820.