Horses dug out of snow recovering

Two frostbitten, emaciated horses were recovering inside a warm barn thanks to volunteers who spent the week before Christmas digging the animals out of snow in the mountains of northeastern British Columbia.

Birgit Stutz said the rescuers cheered when they finally finished digging a half-mile escape route through the snow for the animals. The horses had been abandoned by a hunter and faced almost certain death.

Over the course of a week, a growing number of residents trudged up the mountain with shovels in hand to dig out the escape pathway through 6-foot-deep snow.

Stutz said she and her friends spent so much time and effort on the rescue that they really didn’t have time to prepare for the holidays.

“This is probably the best Christmas gift a person could have, to be able to get these horses out of there,” she said.