Members of the Greeneville Emergency & Rescue Squad did all they could Sunday to save a horse that got stuck in a ditch in the 400 block of Brackens Lane in the Greystone community, but ultimately the animal had to be put down, Rescue Squad member Kevin Ayers said.

The Rescue Squad responded to a call of a horse in a ditch about 9:30 a.m. Sunday. The mare was on her back and unable to right herself.

The owner, Crystal Fillers, had last seen the horse in a fenced-off field on her property across the street the night before, Ayers said.

"We didn't know how long it had been there," he said.

Rescue Squad members used "a rope and haul system" to get the horse out of the ditch, Ayers said.

"We got the rope around the body of the horse and got it up out of the ditch to the road-driveway area," he said.

The owner called a veterinarian, and it was determined that the horse, which had other health problems, had to be euthanized, Ayers said.

It was a difficult job to get the horse out of the ditch, Ayers said.

The animal weighed at least 1,000 pounds, he said.

"[The ditch] was about three to four feet deep and once [the horse] fell in it, [the ditch] was just about as wide as the horse was wide," Ayers said.