After nearly two days of running around Mercer County, Chester the horse is home safe.

Chester got away from the tree to which he was tied on Wednesday while his owner, an Amish man with the last name of Yoder, was fishing at Golden Run along Shenango River Lake in Clark.

Friday morning, Chester was picked up at the Gearhart farm on Yankee Ridge Road in Lackawannock Township by a Clark-area family who agreed to serve as a contact for Yoder, said Sandy Drabick, executive director of the Mercer County Humane Society. The owner of the farm was able to catch Chester and put him in the barn.

Chester was still wearing one of the two blankets draped over him and his tie rope.

"Thank God Chester is at home with Mr. Yoder," Ms. Drabick said Friday.

Between leaving his owner's fishing site on the lake and arriving at the Gearharts' farm, the Humane Society was flooded with calls from people who had spotted him.

"People had sightings from as far as Trout Island Road to Route 258 to Yankee Ridge Road to Route 62," Ms. Drabick said.

One caller who reported a sighting said Chester "was running to beat the band," Ms. Drabick said.

Becky Allison saw a dark horse wearing a blue blanket at about 5:45 a.m. Friday. It was running along U.S. Route 62 near Forrest Brooke Estates in Jefferson Township. She was driving from her home in Hermitage to her job as a respiratory therapist at United Community Hospital in Pine Township.

When she saw the horse, she pulled into a parking lot to call 911.

"It was more hilarious than anything because I was actually late for work over all this," she laughed.

When she got to work, none of her co-workers believed her, until she pulled out the story in Friday's Herald about Chester's disappearance.

"They thought it was just another excuse for being late," Ms. Allison said.

A school bus driver spotted Chester again at 7:45 a.m. on state Route 258. Shortly thereafter the Gearharts found him, Ms. Drabick said.

The Humane Society had agents and volunteers searching the Golden Run area on foot until dark on Thursday. Ms. Drabick said there were no sightings and no footprints.

"We figure the horse, being a buggy horse, stayed on the road most of the time," she said. She added it was possible Chester was heading home to the New Wilmington area.

Ms. Drabick said she wanted to thank everyone who called in Chester's sightings.