WATERTOWN - The new foal is jet black except for a small white diamond on his forehead. His knobby knees look as though they might give way at any moment, but they don’t. Instead, they allow the little colt to dance around his mother and drink a big gulp of milk from beneath her considerable belly.

“It’s a miracle,” Gary Milbrath says of his new horse named Black Thunder.

Click on the link under related content to see an interview with Gary and Connie Milbrath.

It is a miracle. Four months ago, Black Thunder’s mother fell through the ice on a farm pond in the center of the Milbrath’s Watertown farm. She was in the icy water for hours and could easily have died.

“The look in her eyes,” Connie Milbrath says. “It was like ‘please help me.’ There was absolutely nothing I could do.”

There was nothing Mrs. Milbrath could do but call 911. That phone call brought the Johnson Creek Fire Company to the farm. In short order, they were in the frozen water along with the two-thousand pound Percheron named Katie. They secured ropes around the big horse. Then, using axes, they cut a path through the ice and led the black mare to safety.

Monday night the firefighters are standing in the makeshift stall Gary Milbrath fashioned out of a garage. They are gazing at the new foal and his mother.

“It is extremely rewarding,” Assistant chief Jim Wolfe says as he stands above the 100 pound colt curled up in the shadow of his gigantic mother. “That’s what we like to see.”

“It is just a miracle to see such a friendly little colt running around,” adds firefighter Dolora Kleinsteiber.

The Milbrath’s show their appreciation in the form of a financial donation to the fire company. Mrs. Milbrath has tears in her eyes as she hands the check to Jim Wolfe.

Black Thunder may only weigh about 100 pounds now, but he’ll grow to be 17 hands high and weigh as much as his brother Cyclone Jake. Then, the two will be teamed up to pull a large hitch wagon together at fairs and horse shows.