FOUR more abandoned horses belonging to a dealer who was recently jailed have been discovered in Cadiz.
The animals were found by the La Linea de la Concepcion Policia Local in a ‘flooded field without any access to food’, according to the Andalucian Rescue Centre for Horses (ARCH).
“They were virtually skin and bone, they’d been starved long term,” Jean Joss, the ARCH publicity officer, told the Olive Press.
It was ARCH who got the call to take in these ‘extremely emancipated’ animals that Joss described as ‘living skeletons’.
After moving to the rescue centre, one of the horses was discovered ‘lying down in the paddock, unable to gather enough strength to stand up’.
After volunteers and vets spent ‘several hours’ trying to save this equine, they ‘let her go’ by ‘putting her to sleep’ and stated on social media that she was ‘too weak to survive’.
Days before this death and the rescue of the four aforementioned horses, ARCH had taken in six other animals that had been abandoned by the same dealer.
It was this initial rescue that led the prolific horse trader to receive a three year prison sentence which activists celebrated.
These campaigners had become aware of this dealer five years ago when ARCH first rescued animals from his care.
In 2021 and 2022 they took in 15 equines that were confiscated by SEPRONA but failed to get the trader behind bars as he managed to get ‘round his sentence by putting the animals into the names and codes of other people’.
It was last month when his dodgy dealings came to an end as a ‘more sympathetic judge’ sent the owner to prison after what Joss called a ‘combined effort from the Policia Local, The Animal Collective, ARCH and their animal rights lawyer’.
Supporting the imprisonment is La Linea’s Ayuntamiento who has stated that the arrested individual had been neglecting animals for the ‘past decade’.
“Leaving a horse or donkey in an uncontrolled area, without water or sufficient food, is not a way to keep an animal: it is a situation of neglect” the Ayuntamiento stated on their website in response to this specific situation.
In the same message the Ayuntamiento promised ‘to continue to act firmly against any case of animal abuse or abandonment’ and encouraged citizens to report any suspected cases of these crimes to them as ‘protecting animals is a collective responsibility’.
While this sentence is a cause for celebration, taking in ten new animals has put increased pressure on ARCH.
It was a ‘squash’ to fit the additional equines into the centre with two having to be sent to temporary foster care while space was created for them.
Space is not the only issue; each of the animals require specialist veterinary care due to their poor condition.
The starved horses all bring with them their own medical challenges, from worm and lice infections to colic, which lead to ‘astronomical’ vet bills.
Their emancipation is a challenge of itself as one can not ‘just feed a starving horse because if you give them too much too soon it can do more harm than good,’ according to Joss.
“Getting the animals better is a long term thing and we need all the support we can get,” she added.
To help cover these costs ARCH is appealing to the public.
“The thing about our charity is that it doesn’t get any funding from anywhere, when the police say please take these animals we even have to pay for the transport,” Joss explained.
Therefore, every single donation ‘really helps’.
Donations to support ARCH can be made here.
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