Woman seen in viral video rescuing horse from floodwaters opens up about the ordeal

In a flooding disaster, it can be difficult to determine how to transport and care for your beloved family pets. When it is a small animal like a dog or cat, it may be easier to relocate a pet.

But what do you do when your pet is a 27-year-old horse and your house is surrounded by water?

“If you need swimming lessons, Michelle teaches swimming lessons to people -- and horses,” Jennifer Ocker yelled in a video, which shows her sister, Michelle Miller, guiding their family horse, Calista, through neck-deep water to dry land. The clip was aired widely on television and online last week.

The crazy video was filmed in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on Saturday, May 25. It captures one extreme event in a region that has been inundated by widespread and historic flooding over the last few weeks. Thousands of residents along the Arkansas River have been forced to evacuate in recent days after heavy rains soaked the region.

Michelle and Jennifer spoke about their experience leading Calista, a long-time family pet, to drier land with AccuWeather Video Producer Taliya Riesterer.

Calista has been in the family for 27 years and has become an integral part of their clan. Growing up, the sisters helped take care of her and spent hours riding her. She was like a family dog or cat that you “couldn’t do without.” Michelle described her as a "family pet" that they have all grown "really attached to" over the years.

"It's been a part of our lives for pretty much our entire lives," Michelle said.

Calista is now a retired horse due to her old age, and the property in the video is her "retirement home," as described by Jennifer.

While Calista may have been able to swim to safety on her own, she could have wandered off alone, Jennifer said. Due to her older age, the family also worried whether she would have been able to make it across the river on her own. While swimming her across the floodwaters was highly dangerous, the sisters were not able to think of an alternate solution.

“The problem is if we hadn’t been with her, then it’s likely she would have swum in the wrong direction,” Michelle said.

In the video, Calista tries to go in the wrong direction in several instances. Michelle said “I had to keep adjusting her back on course. So she could have swam out, but it’s possible that she would have swam further into the river versus swimming toward the land.”

Earlier in the week on Wednesday, the sisters moved Calista to higher ground and prepped the barn and part of their land for the flood. The sisters' house and back pasture was not in the flood zone in the first four to five days.

However, on Saturday, local officials released the updated flood forecast, which now included all of their land, including their house.

“We had to figure out a different way to get her [Calista] out of there so that she wasn’t stuck and potentially drowned,” Michelle said.

Their house is surrounded on three sides by the river, as well as a tributary. Typically, when the river floods, the driveway floods but the house and the pastures are rarely impacted by floodwaters. Jennifer described the typical flood situation, where they are surrounded by floodwaters, as their “own little island.”

However, in this instance when the floodwaters were so much higher than normal, the sisters realized that the floodwaters were going to cover everything, including their house. They came to understand that they were going to need to swim Calista out of harm's way.

According to Jennifer, flooding of this nature has never happened before while they've lived there.

“We had a flood in 2015 in the river valley, but it wasn’t to this degree,” Michelle said. “It was high, but it wasn’t anything like that.”

The 2015 flooding was expected to be the worst it would ever get, Michelle further explained.

“The houses that were safe in the 2015 flood were supposed to be safe in the 2019 flood,” Michelle said. “And the 2019 flood ended up being such a massive disaster, that it took so many homes that thought that they were safe, and so many businesses that were supposed to be safe.”

The Ocker sisters' home is still standing, but it’s standing in water. The water has slowly receded but it is still flooding the home over a week later. The sisters have not been able to get back inside their home and they are still not sure how high the water levels were around their home. The state of their home remains unknown until they are able to get in and assess the damage.

“It’s been a shock,” Jennifer said.

The record-breaking flooding continues to impact their day-to-day lives. Numerous roads remain closed, significantly increasing the commute time of many workers.

“Our mom actually is having to stay in the town that she works in because she can’t get in and out,” Jennifer said. The commute, which normally takes 20 minutes, would now take her over 2 hours due to the road closures.

Michelle said they have been living temporarily in the places of those who have opened up their homes.

“We have a really amazing community with a lot of people that really stepped up and volunteered,” Michelle said.

The flooding has brought the community together, as members help with sandbagging, help with moving furniture up to higher levels or helped load the furniture into the moving trucks.

"It’s important for people to know that it really matters when their communities come together and help," Michelle said.

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