‘The bond is very real’: meet the King of animal rescue

By Stephanie Gardiner

A horse walks into a septic tank. Hours later, a prized pony walks into a different septic tank.

What sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke is the reality for animal rescue expert David King.

This extraordinary day began with the rescue of a hefty Clydesdale gelding from a septic tank in the NSW Hawkesbury, a rural area in Sydney’s outskirts.

Mr King was rinsing off in a hot shower when his emergency beeper rang out again, alerting the NSW State Emergency Service veteran to another trapped horse.

“At the second job it was a rowdy scene, with people trying to get in and do the rescue themselves,” Mr King recalled about the evening seven years ago.

“The little pony… was thrashing and it was going to self-destruct.”

Heavy animals can fall into in-ground tanks when they walk on the lids, often during droughts as they seek out lush grass and water.

Mr King and his colleagues calmed the pony’s owners while a vet sedated the animal, before emergency workers winched it out.

The rescued pony won a dressage competition about five months later.

“The joy, just the joy of seeing that,” Mr King told AAP, elation in his voice.

Having graduated from the Scouts to the volunteer service more than four decades ago, Mr King has become a leader in managing rescues of animals during disasters, accidents and mishaps.

He remembers a dog that had to be dug out from beneath a rock shelf after it chased an animal deep into a wombat hole in the Blue Mountains.

“It didn’t stop to say thanks,” Mr King said.

“It ran with intent to the nearest tree – it had something else on its mind.”

There have been cows stuck in muddy creeks, pet macaws reunited with their owners and countless cats stuck high up in trees.

An old racehorse followed its nose to a stash of lucerne for a late-night feed, only for its legs to fall through the wooden floorboards.

“Instead of trying to remove the horse from the shed, we removed the shed from the horse,” Mr King remembered.

Not all stories end so happily.

During the 2022 flood catastrophe, livestock were stranded and injured, pets were lost, and herds of sheep and cattle were washed away.

“Our emergency services were (rescuing) humans sitting on roofs,” Mr King said.

“They were so busy focusing on human life that there was just not enough capacity to help all those animals.”

The NSW SES rescued 66,000 animals during the year-long disaster that hit much of the state.

Last month, Mr King shared his experience with international colleagues at an animal rescue and trauma care conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

He believes Australian agencies could follow their US counterparts’ lead in training community groups to manage animals before and during disasters.

As the nation faces the threat of worsening bushfires and floods in years to come, Mr King is visiting several states to up-skill volunteers and deliver messages about readying animals for emergencies.

“I want to ensure that every rescue person in the state is trained in large animal rescue and I’ve hit over 1000 people,” he said.

“The animal-human bond is very real.

“Helping animals is in our DNA.”