Dear Editor,
I always say that I will never turn my back on any animal that needs help, so I do hope this horse forgives me for not doing more, more quickly. It was the evening of Mother’s Day, just about 8pm when I got a call from a lady living on Hadfield Street telling me of a bleeding horse, lying on the parapet at the back of GT&T. I asked the lady if she knew the owner of the horse and she said no. I called a vet, informing him of what the lady had said. At the time, nothing could be done, and we went to bed praying for the best. The next morning (Monday, May 13) I got to the site early, only to find the horse had already died and was beginning to swell. I called solid waste but their phone rang out so I went to the Princes Street office and informed them about the horse; apparently they knew about it already and said their “backhoe” had broken down and the council tractor would pick it up after lunch.
It was before 2.30 pm (the same day) when the tractor arrived to get the horse which was swollen and smelly. The tractor trailer had four men in their 40s or 50s and an elderly driver. Editor, these men were ill equipped to handle that situation. All the men had were forks and cement slings and nothing to help them pull a horse of that size onto the trailer. They had no tarpaulin to keep the diseased animal confined and no protective gear, not even Jeyes fluid to keep the smell down. I got on the phone and tried calling various agencies, including the city council and local government for a “backhoe.” By now it was getting late and the men decided to leave.
The next morning (Tuesday), the horse was still there about to burst; it was in the afternoon (I was told) that the Local Government Ministry sent their backhoe and the horse was placed in the tractor and sent to the dumpsite. However, what remained was a bloody stinky mess that no one seemed to care about.
A local guard in the area later told me the rest of the story about how this horse met her death. It seems the horse was tied to the GT&T fence and left there by an apparently “uncaring owner.” A young boy, approximately 12 years old, decided to untie the horse and parade it around. The guard, and another person from the area, told him to return the horse to where it had been tied. The boy ignored them and continued to lead the horse around. It eventually stumbled by a little gutter; being pregnant, she could not get up and that is where she and her unborn foal died. The young man went away, with seemingly no remorse.
It’s days like this that leave me very frustrated with my mind full of questions:
Why would any owner leave a pregnant horse, nearly ready to give birth, alone and tied to a fence?
Why would a young boy feel he has the right to move a horse that he knows nothing about?
Why don’t we have an animal hotline with access to a qualified vet for emergency situations?
Why doesn’t the Zoo have a hotline so that roadkill of large animals can be quickly evaluated by the Zoo for animal feed.
Why aren’t we more outraged by the lack of health and sanitation in our city streets?
Why aren’t we more compassionate with public employees that end up doing all the dirty work without adequate tools and protective gear?
In closing I appeal to all owners of large animals, especially horses, to think about animal safety.
Yours faithfully,
Syeada Manbodh
