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A horse that got spooked during an oceanside photo shoot near Santa Barbara had to be rescued from the sea after it ran further and further into the ocean until it was barely visible.
"Air of Temptation," who goes by the name William, was a model for a group of photographers, who got spooked during the shoot and ran into the ocean. Some swimmers tried to catch him and another tried to lasso him but it sounds like that only made matters worse. William ended up swimming out of sight off the coast of Summerland Beach, California, according to the Huffington Post.
Horses can swim but William had never gone swimming in his life, his owner Mindy Peters told the Post. She assumed he was lost forever: "I had to pull over in my car. I just started bawling."
Some rig workers spotted the horse and let rescue crews know where he was. Still it wasn't easy since only William's head was visible.
"It was a real needle-in-a-haystack kind of find," Ryan Kelly, a Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol Officer, told NBC. "He looked like every other bird that was just sitting on the water."
William was rescued about a mile offshore, and he's resting up in a nearby equine hospital. He should be home within a few days.
