KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

Joan Resk combs Farruco on Monday at her barn in Roanoke County. Farruco, an Andalusian stallion, went missing for three days.

Joan Resk combed through Farruco's mane, snapping her wrist to untangle his black hairs. Red stitches weaved in and out of a wound near his nostrils, and petroleum jelly covered dozens of bruises that peppered his body.

It had been a long 72 hours for Resk while her 10-year-old pure Spanish stallion wandered the hilly Southwest Roanoke County woods near her farm.

She could joke about it Monday afternoon, as she patted Farruco's neck with relief in the comfort of his hay stall. But what had happened to him? And how did she track him?

"When I finally found him, I thought I was seeing an apparition," she said.

She woke early Thursday to feed her four Andalusian horses and found that the biggest one -- 1,200-pound Farruco -- was not there. A section of the four-strand electric fencing was torn, so she called a friend: "Get dressed. Farruco's missing."

They called more friends who called more friends, and by the next morning, the area news media were reporting on the missing horse.

Resk, an osteopathic physician who runs a practice called To Life, answered about 50 e-mails from concerned horse owners she had never met. And, she said, she worried herself that someone would adopt or shoot him.

Strangers showed up at her door. A horse tracker from Bedford County looked for Farruco, as did a man in his 70s from Amherst County and an unemployed woman from Garden City. No luck.

It was at the roughly 7 a.m. daybreak Sunday that Resk met with Greg Funkhouser, master conservation police officer of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, to look.

After an hour and a half of following hoof marks in the Buck Mountain area, Resk got separated from Funkhouser and was going to call from her cellphone for help when she looked up and there was Farruco.

"If you're looking for the right signs, it looks like a bulldozer ran through the woods," Funkhouser said.

Farruco looked like the loser in a bar fight. Another farm stallion had bitten Farruco in a battle for male dominance before he fled, and he presumably fed on broom sage and bark during the three days in the woods. He had lacerated his nose against a tree, and looked like he'd lost 100 pounds, Resk said.

At the stall Monday, Resk said Farruco still had years of siring offspring ahead. Then, another horse owner buzzed Resk's cellphone to ask about Farruco.

"I don't think he's going to make it to the show this June," Resk said into the receiver. "He's got a few bruises, but I'm going to take real good care of him."