Owners unsure how horse ended up in swimming pool

This horse had to be led from water.

Saturday’s rescue of Penny, a 2-year-old draft horse who lives in Bohemia, from her family’s in-ground swimming pool took some 16 police and fire rescuers. Plus improvising with a halter, a rope and a makeshift, tree-tied pulley-anchor system.

After about 25 minutes, she was free.

It all began sometime before 8 a.m.: Penny, who lives on the property, had jumped over at least one fence, and possibly two fences, and wandered over to the water and got stuck in the cover of the pool’s deep end, which is about 8 feet deep, off Pond Road.

“We didn’t know she could jump so high,” owner Chris Tsintavis said Monday in an interview, adding: “She defeated two fences, got over and found her way near the water and, of course, obviously, as you know, made her way into the pool. … We’re not 100% sure exactly when she got out. But we can only speculate.”

Penny isn’t the first horse on Long Island to need human help to be freed: In recent decades, wayward horses have been rescued from a dry well (Old Brookville, 1995); a burning stable during a fire (Belmont Park racetrack, 1999); a swimming pool (Dix Hills, 2011); and a cesspool (Islip terrace, 2017).

On Saturday, Penny was stuck and anxious and thrashing about in the pool, which is 10-feet wide by 20-feet long, said Bohemia Fire Department Chief Scott Thompson.

A halter had been placed to keep her head above water. The halter was secured to a rope, the cover's anchor points disconnected, and Penny dragged toward the shallow end of the pool, according to Thompson.

“At that point, we were able to let the horse stand up. We freed the horse from the pool cover itself, and then we were able to walk the horse out of the water.”

Tsintavis’ wife is Penny’s primary rider — “My wife is the horse person in the house,” he said. Their 10-year-old son also rides the horse — with supervision, Tsintavis notes.

It was the boy who first noticed that Penny had taken a dip.

“My son saw the horse in the pool and called my wife out. Wife came out. And there you go,” Tsintavis said.

Now Penny is getting back to normal, and the family is looking at taking further preventive measures to keep her secure.

“The horse is in great shape. She was just frightened, basically, from what happened. But by the end of the night, she was back to normal, and now she’s just the way she was — before any of this happened.”

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.