TWO of the ten horses that belonged to a recently jailed trader have perished after rescuers were ‘physically unable to rehabilitate them’.
The pair were discovered with two other animals by La Linea Policia Local in a ‘flooded field without any access to food,’ according to the Andalucian Rescue Centre for Horses (ARCH).
“They’d obviously been starved for a long time,” said Jean Joss, ARCH’s publicity officer, who went on to tell The Olive Press that all four animals were ‘virtually skin and bone’, ‘extremely emancipated’ and like ‘living skeletons’.
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One of these passed away soon after being moved to the rescue centre; she 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’.
Since then another has passed away with the vet giving a new report on these two horses to ARCH’s lawyer who is planning on handing a denuncia to authorities.
“The dealer is already in prison and should be there for three years but the report will be passed onto the court, whether anything will come of it, we don’t know,” Joss told The Olive Press.
Now attention has turned to the two other horses found in the ‘flooded field’ with rescuers warning that they do not know ‘whether they will actually survive in the long term’.
“We’ll do our best and they seem to be doing okay at the moment but it’s a very long job,” said Joss.
Prior to this particular discovery on La Linea, ARCH had taken in six other animals that had been abandoned by the same dealer.
This wave of animals are ‘not doing too badly’, according to Joss, who said ‘the donkey has not been very well, the two mares are still very thin but one of the horses is doing really well’.
“It’s a lot long term but they’re still on their feet,” she added.
It was this initial rescue of half a dozen animals that led the prolific horse trader to receive the three year prison sentence that was celebrated by activists.
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’.
His dealings however came to an end this February when a ‘more sympathetic judge’ sent him to prison after what Joss called a ‘combined effort from the Policia Local, The Animal Collective, ARCH and their animal rights lawyer’.
A move like this for ARCH is not unusual; the organisation has rescued animals and campaigned for their rights for nearly two decades and now, after two and a half years of trying, has been named a Utilidad Publica.
This title means that ARCH is ‘officially recognised by the Junta’ but it is ‘still going to have to rely on donations,’ according to Joss.
“We believe that we are now able to apply for various loans which we may or may not get if we fill in vast amounts of paperwork and that people who are physically residents in Spain can offset their donations against tax if they want to leave us something in their will,” she explained.
The latter ‘could make a lot of difference’ to the organisation.
“It’s also sort of recognition for all the efforts over the years,” Joss stated.
The imprisonment of the aforementioned dealer is one of ARCH’s most recent efforts, one which has also been recognised by La Linea town hall 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 town hall wrote 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’.
For ARCH, protecting and rehabilitating horses continues to be their priority but, despite their new status, they are struggling to manage their load.
“Horses take a lot of feeding, we have horrendous bills when they have to have special feed, the bills get even higher when they’re in a bad condition, our vet fees go up, so that means we have more money going out,” explained Joss.
It is an ongoing cycle for ARCH as the more donations they get, the more horses they take in and the more donations they need.
At the moment their rescue centre is at capacity and the charity is appealing to the public to help them cover their costs.
“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 said.
Therefore, every single donation ‘really helps’.
Donations to support ARCH can be made here.
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