Teen rides terrified horse 14 miles to safety during Palisades Fire
Video shows Kalyna Fedorowycz, 16, of Topanga, rescuing her neighbor's Friesian-warmblood cross, Sovereignty, after he refused to be loaded into his owner’s horse trailer.
A teenage equestrian showed her passion for animals by rescuing her neighbor’s horse from the California wildfires last month.
Kalyna Fedorowycz, 16, of Topanga, rode and walked the Friesian-warmblood cross named Sovereignty nearly 14 miles to safety after the scared animal refused to be loaded into his owner’s horse trailer.
Sovereignty belongs to Kalyna’s neighbor and trainer, Tamara Walker, who owns Walker Horse Farms.
Kalyna Fedorowycz, 16, of Topanga, Calif., is pictured, left, with Sovereignty, the horse she rescued from the Palisades Fire last month. At right, Kalyna rides her own horse, Ciel, in an equestrian event. (Credit: Photos courtesy of Donna Fedorowycz)
“All of the horses are trained to load because we live in a fire area, so that’s the first thing we teach our young horses,” Kalyna told the U.S. Equestrian Federation. “But Sovereignty is so stubborn, and he’s such a scaredy cat. He just froze up and they couldn’t get him in.”
Kalyna and her mother were 300 miles away when the fire broke out on Jan. 7. Though their neighborhood in the Santa Monica Mountains was initially out of harm’s way, fierce Santa Ana winds soon changed that. As she and her mom hurried home, Kalyna’s older sister, Olenka, helped Walker evacuate nine of her 10 horses.
Sovereignty wouldn’t step into the trailer, however.
“Sovereignty is not a confident horse and does not like the trailer,” Walker said. “Normally we can still get him to go in, but with the panicky energy due to the fire, he sensed our anxiety and refused to load the two times we tried over the course of two hours.”
Fires burn in the Santa Monica Mountains, near the Topanga, Calif., home of Kalyna Fedorowycz. The 16-year-old equestrian rescued her neighbor’s horse, Sovereignty, from the Palisades Fire last month. (Credit: Markian Fedorowycz)
Walker was forced to leave the 16-year-old gelding behind as she and Olenka moved the other animals to an evacuation center set up at Pierce College. The neighbors and all of their animals, including Kalyna’s own horse, Ciel, spent the night in a horse trailer.
“The trailer didn't have a mattress in it, so we had to just lay down all the blankets and saddle pads that we had from the last show,” Kalyna said, according to the USEF. “It just felt safer in there and was closer to the horses.”
Sovereignty spent that night in a pasture that had been cleared of brush and was surrounded by fire-resistant trees, the federation reported. When Kalyna and her father, Markian Fedorowycz, went back the next day to check on Sovereignty and their family’s home, however, the hills around the property were either on fire or had already burned.
Though their home was fine, Sovereignty was not.
“He was scared and covered in ash; it was blowing all around him, so I cleaned him up and I tried to calm him down,” Kalyna told the USEF. “The concern was that even if Sovereignty wasn’t hurt by the fire, the stress would cause him to colic, or he’d get hurt on a fence trying to escape.”
Kalyna Fedorowycz, 16, of Topanga, Calif., is pictured riding her neighbor’s horse, Sovereignty, who she rescued from the Palisades Fire last month. (Credit: Markian Fedorowycz)
According to The Chronicle of the Horse, the teen could only think of one way to get the shaken horse to safety. She saddled Sovereignty up and climbed onto him, hoping to get him far enough to call for help.
Markian Fedorowycz told the publication that he supported his daughter’s decision.
“Kalyna’s hard to say no to. She said, ‘We’ve got to get him out of here.’ You do what she says,” he said. “Even though she’s a kid, she’s in charge.”
Fedorowycz followed Kalyna and Sovereignty in his Prius, offering an encouraging voice and recording a TikTok video of the harrowing, four-hour journey. The size of his hybrid allowed him to drive under downed power lines and skirt around displaced rocks in the roadway.
The video shows Kalyna walking the horse through some of the more frightening areas and running alongside him in others.
“There was no plan. We were just improvising the whole time,” Fedorowycz told the Chronicle. “You can see in some of the videos where she’s actually directing traffic because people were trying to get by.”
Watch some of Fedorowycz’s footage below.
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Kalyna planned to ride Sovereignty all the way to Pierce College if need be, but at the 10-mile mark, a woman evacuating several Shetland ponies stopped to help. Sovereignty, by then exhausted, finally allowed them to load him into a trailer with the other animals.
Fedorowycz said he never doubted his daughter’s instincts.
“It was exciting to see her persevere like that, and I’m really proud of her,” he said.
Walker said her first reaction to learning about their escape was not shock but laughter because, as she told the USEF, “Of course she rode him down.”
“Kalyna is very strong-willed and once she makes up her mind, not much stops her. Fortunately, most of her decisions turn out to be good ones. And in this case, it definitely was,” she said.
Though all of Walker’s and the Fedorowycz family’s animals survived, it was not without injury. Kalyna’s beloved Ciel broke through a fence at Pierce College and punctured a knee.
The horse underwent surgery, a procedure Walker is helping pay for through a GoFundMe page she set up for Ciel. The page has raised more than $26,000.