A message from horse trust, please read

J

jaydevon

Guest
further to a campain on horses and hound i thought some of you may like to see this artical and email, to me from the horses trust....

Thank you for your email. It will not be possible for donations to be sent directly to our vet as the vet treating many of the horses is our own Chief Executive Brigadier Paul Jepson who is an exceptional equine vet specialised in dealing with these particular type of rescued pony. If your fellow supporters are concerned that the money they donate would not go specifically towards these ponies then please rest assured that if that is your desire and you say so within your donation when we receive it then the charity is duty bound, by charity law, to only spend that money on those horses.

Any events that you manage to organise in aid of these ponies please keep us informed, similarly with your petition. I have attached a small article that I have written about these ponies which may interest you and your friends on the forum so if you are able to spread the word then hopefully the horse community can work together to try and prevent this sort of cruelty happening to this devastating extent in the future.

Rebecca Evans
Head of Welfare
 
How horses come to live in the conditions described by the journalists attending the largest horse rescue in the UK defies belief. It was survival of the fittest, only those horses which made it to the hay managed to sustain a reasonable weight whilst the weak horses were bullied and literally starved with their similarly compromised allies stood by their sides, in their own excrement, many tethered in large pens amongst their friends who did not survive, no doubt wondering when their relief would come.

I have never seen such poor emaciated animals, the worst of our group are mere skin and bone, their withers and hips protrude so much they look deformed and their spines have a huge drop where there is no accompanying flesh and the rib cage as you follow your hand along makes it all to easy to imagine how close these animals came to total starvation. Their coats are matted, their skin is riddled with sores, ringworm and lice, their tails exhibit the signs of standing in their own excrement for long periods and a total lack of human care and attention.
And yet you handle these horses and you can sense their relief at being rescued, they are wary of people but they see that we come with food and water and a clean sheltered stable to sleep in and their trust is growing as their strength increases gradually each day. I spend time looking into their eyes, wondering what horrors and psychological damage their experience will have had on them, how can they forget. We have a horse which was so malnourished due to lack of food and water, standing in excrement, surrounded by its dead friends with little or no access to daylight that it started to go blind. I remember a similar occurrence with pit ponies which worked for days at a time in the mine, but did not go through the ordeal of this pony. How will this pony ever allow itself to enjoy life I thought, is there any hope or would it be kinder to put her to sleep. After a few days in a warm stable, with food and a real sense of hope this horse is beginning to look less pathetic and our vet has told us that her sight is improving as her vitamin A levels become less deficient.

But how did these horses get in the hands of this individual. We cannot merely blame an ineffective RSPCA. The RSPCA are under resourced, under funded and understaffed. They have a responsibility to protect all animals and need our assistance and support to this end. The man was a horse dealer, he would sell horses for riding and for meat and the horse community has a collective responsibility to make the acquisition of both of these groups of horses more difficult. We must be more vigilant when selling horses to ensure that they do not end up at a horse sale where they can be sold for a couple of pounds and picked up by individuals like this. We need to follow up our horse sales and loans and check where these horses end up. We must ensure our horses have passports and proper documentation, microchipping will hopefully be compulsory in the future. There is also the issue of breeding of which the horse community is certainly accountable. If this horrific case does one thing I hope it makes every individual who is considering breeding from their mare to stop and think and fully justify their endeavour. Unless the mare has impeccable breeding, conformation and health, coupled with an excellent competition record and temperament you should not breed even if you swear to keep the animal all its life which no one can realistically do, we cannot predict when our circumstances may change. Why do we choose to breed when there is such a huge surplus of horses ready to purchase in the UK, is it just for our own selfish emotive reasons or do we like to give our broken down mares a job to do?

The horse charities have worked together with the RSPCA to rescue these horses and they will have a future but we need the publics’ support and the horse community need to work together to prevent this happening in the future. The horse community has a responsibility to report horses which they think are not being cared for properly but by this I mean those which have their welfare significantly compromised, we do not want to waste the RSPCA’s time which is already limited. Do not leave the reporting of poorly looked after horses to someone it is our collective responsibility to look after all our horses and they deserve better.
 
makes you feel ashamed to be human doesnt it - this had me in tears - horses are so precious we should be down on our knees in gratitude to them for all the pleasure and kindness they give us not letting them end up like this :mad::mad::mad::mad:
 
Thanks for posting this Jaydevon :) Horse people are really pulling together on this, its heart warming isn't it?

Can you tell us a bit about what was in the article mentioned by Rebecca?
 
the long thread is the artical, please guys have a look on the horse and hound forums as there are people doing collections and taking lorrys up with donations ect, theres also a petiton about to go live aswell, through horse and hound forums and the members on there, we have managed to get a whole lot more press coverage, so its not a story that makes the news one day but is forgotten the next, its called operation ester after the donkey.

there are going to be sponsored rides all over the country, hopefully on the same day, and we are trying to get permisson to go through towns, and to get press coverage from every paper in the country.where possible to get the message across, myself and others are putting these together,
 
Thankyou jaydevon you are the first person who has also expressed my view that we the horse community share a large collective responsibility.

Owning a horse is a privelege and we do need to look at the whole picture as I posted earlier.
 
fab thankyou, it was intresting to know we can specifiy where the money goes, and a good idea aswell!
 
Thankyou

To Jaydevon for posting this here!!!

We still need donations so I ask that everyone digs deep or gives what ever they can....
 
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Update On Donating

***UPDATE** AFTER speaking with the Yard Manager at the Horse Trust to make sure that they still do want donations of goods. The last thing anyone wants to do is to create a further problem for them by turning up with eg tatty, dirty, torn etc rugs and so on. Well, the Yard Manager was brilliant. Yes they DO still want donations but they are up to their armpits in rugs! What they want now is FEED and BEDDING. So please, please put the word out. Some of the other rescue charities may still need other stuff but the Horse Trust want feed and bedding. Their Yard Manager has asked for shavings, mollichaff, fibrebeet, small bale haylage. i will almost certainly be posting more about this asap. ready for the convoy perhaps next week. We desperately need others to join this virtual convoy as it could be a huge undertaking if we try to take it all. And it might well turn out that there wasn't enough load room on our lorry anyway so it would be pointless. Please talk tome well in advance...more news as it unfolds. By the way, Horse Trust also need ££££s and they guarantee that 90p of every £1 donated goes to the horses! x
 
I'm happy to buy 5 sacks of feed. In fact I'd be honoured. I'll get to the feed shop on Monday and get some fibrebeet and mollichaff :)

xxx
 
thats brilliant, anyspace left in our trailer we are going to fill ourselfs, be it with straw, or food, what ever the charity needs the most.
 
I thought the days of equine "Belsens" were behind us. Sadly I was wrong!!!! As a nation we are too good at passing by on the other side, "Not my business" Abuse of any kind is EVERYBODY'S business. I feel desperately sorry for the horses but if it serves as a wake up call then some good may come out of it. Pulling together after an emergency like this is what the internet can do like no other. All I can give is rugs and they have squillions of those.
Just a plea if I may. When the welfare dust has settled, do not forget charities like SWEP whose interest is the semi feral moor ponies. What with lunatic car drivers, tourists who want to feed the ponies, and some farmers who deserve the same care as they give their ponies, SWEP has it's work cut out!
 
Frances and I have been watching all this unfold with interest.

The attitude of everyone is heartening, it shows folk are upset and apalled by the recent discovery of 30 dead ponies etc.

Everone is pooling resorces and openly expressing their horror.

You might remember last year, not far off this time, frances and I were involved with a similar case. I reported a dead pony in a field belonging to a character familiar with the animal welafe charities, pony societies and local folk, who, when in the pub expressed their horror at the way he treated his animals, but NoT ONE OF THEM would stand up and do anything about it with any conviction. Mossy is so right, p[ass, by, not my problem

IF YOU ARE NOT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

Frances and I were told in a meeting of a pony society to shut up, keep quiet, we don't want this getting out. I had folk from another equine related society, on the comittee, telling me to keep my mouth shut.

When this kind of "head in the Sand" comes from folk who should be nailing their colours the the mast and being seen to actively stop it, where are we?

Only local folk who knew what was going on came to us with offers of food and help in nursing the sick animal we had hanging in a sling in the byre.

Okay, Amersham is a bigger case, and it was all horses, afterall who cares how many cows and sheep and dogs were killed and found dead and rotting. It's amazing what gets hushed up in the interests of some folks personal associations!
 
we may be appalled at this man but what about the ex owners of the horses who sent them to sales - out of sight out of mind go to southall market any week and see all the ex pc and riding ponies and horses going for meat - could someone not have had them pts at home if they were unwanted or worse how many sales have they been round before that to get a better price for them?

the charity i am involved with is inundated with people wanting to off load old or unrideable horses on us, so that we can retire them and pay for them - in many cases, the best option would for the horse to be pts but the owner doesn't even want to do this, or pay for disposal costs. the breeders of unwanted shetlands, new forests which are unhandled, unwanted, not valuable have to ask themselves why they put the mares in foal or people with 'problem' mares who see having a foal as an outlet for her to solve their issues again think about why they are doing it.

people buy horses with little fore thought of being able to provide along term future for them - I bought mine in 1994 when I was earning lots of money, had my own place - in 2002 our business failed and we had a horrible time and I rehomed two of mine as I just could not see how I could continue to support them - they went to the charity and one came back six weeks later looking a total wreck, she just proved that she was bonded with me and that she was mine to sort out. I would have her pts now if for any reason i could no longer provide for her.

Everyone's circumstances change and sadly often when we need help, need to find a home for a horse, there is nowhere for it to go. Waiting lists, not what they want, if you have a horse to dispose of often you cannot find a 'kind' outlet for it.

Until people take real responsibility for the horses they own this will happen over and over again. But people want to get their money back on mistakes when they buy horses, so they lie about it, sell it on, and leave someone else to sort it out. A few homes later maybe it ended up in Amersham.

It is great that perhaps this awful case may make people begin to take horse welfare a bit more seriously and at least these ones will be safe now, but next week at Southall market the next batch of equine rejects are there waiting to be saved from this ending to their lives.
 
Well said Big Ears.....

Could I also ask everyone to take a look at the website in Jaydevons and my signatures.... All the charities have been made aware of the site and I hope they will have time to nip on and read the guestbook.... so please sign it if you drop by!

Thanks!
 
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