BATON ROUGE - One Mississippi family is thanking the Baton Rouge Police Department and LSU Farm and Large Animal Veterinary Services for saving their horse on Saturday.

A rodeo horse named Trooper has been part of the Gregory family for more than six years. The family routinely does rodeos. On Friday, the family went to a rodeo at Brushy Creek Ranch in Gloster, Miss.

On Saturday, the family noticed Trooper behaving differently. The family said they had two options: wait 90 minutes for a veterinarian to get to the ranch site, or drive the 80 minutes to LSU's large animal clinic.

The family chose LSU.

"If the vet gets here and the treatment doesn't work, then you've still got to go somewhere to try and save the horse," Jessica Gregory, one of the horse owners, said.

LSU Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Kaitlyn Ieradi said Trooper had colic, a condition that can be dangerous to horses.

"The onset can vary as well as the duration, then also the fatality versus how well they do. Time is of the essence with any colic and getting them assessed appropriately is always important," Ieradi said.

At the time, the family did not know they were entering Baton Rouge right as the LSU-UCLA football game let out.

"I got LSU on the phone, the large animal clinic, and they called the vet on-call, Dr. Ieradi. She got on the phone and said 'I hate to tell you this, but this is literally the worst time you could be trying to get here,'" Gregory said. "The LSU game was in the fourth quarter and they were about to start contraflow, which I didn't even know what that was. My GPS went from saying we were six minutes away, it was going to reroute us and we were going to be 50."

With the realization it was going to take at least another hour to get to the clinic, the family was stuck.

"Thinking that you physically couldn't get there, this is probably the end," Gregory said.

She said that is when a BRPD officer stepped in.

"He made a call, it was not even a minute and a half, probably even less and this entire motorcycle crew showed up. They surrounded us and said follow us, we're going to get you there," Gregory said.

The motorcade took the family right to the clinic on Skip Bertman Drive.

"I had never been there before, but we're going by Tiger Stadium. My sons like, 'Wow Tiger Stadium!' We're like, 'Got to go. Got to go,'" she said.

The BRPD also went and found the veterinarian who was also caught in the contraflow traffic.

"He came and found me. They took me back here. It was a wild experience. it was pretty crazy. It's the closest to a celebrity experience that I'll ever have. I just appreciate everyone that was involved in this," Ieradi said.

First-year veterinary student Joshua Lessigne said it was vital that BRPD got Ieradi to the clinic.

"It was really good! I was a little worried at first just because we didn't have any clinicians here. Finding out the horse was getting a police escort was really nice. The fact that the police officers got Dr. Ieradi, if they hadn't done that, she would have been an hour or two late getting to the vet school. Luckily, she only got here about 10 minutes after the horse got here. We were able to get TPR and stuff. As we were starting to do stuff to the horse, she was able to come in here, take over, and help us out a good bit," Lessigne said.

Lessigne added this was a team effort and said Abigail Sales was a student technician helping with the horse. Dr. Mustajab Mirza also helped in saving Trooper, Ieradi said.

Trooper received immediate treatment and required emergency surgery. Trooper is expected to be okay and the family said they are thankful for the fast action of all the parties involved.

"Thanks to the kind police officers and motorcycle cops, we got there in time to have emergency surgery," Gregory said. "They all went above and beyond, and we are beyond grateful."