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A CHARITY THAT rescues and rehomes horses – and this year dogs too – has said it has been a cruel winter for equines, as many were left by their owners without food or shelter.
“It’s been a very busy year in general, Martina Kenny, one of the founders of My Lovely Horse Rescue (MLHR) said. “Yesterday alone we had 30 calls just about horses. Since we starter properly taking dogs as well about four or five months ago, we’ve taken 80 dogs.
“There’s definitely been no improvement in the animal welfare situation, despite what the government seems to think. It may be that it looks like there’s a slight improvement because numbers being put down are lower – that’s because the pounds are trying to home them now that the councils and government have told them to.
“Those horses are mainly going to rescues, so their numbers go down and numbers for rescue organisations go up. It makes no sense.”
Kenny said the charity’s volunteers this year have again seen horses left in fields in the winter by owners who “can’t be bothered” with them.
“There was a lot of breeding in the summer so it’s lots of foals now. They’re just discarded like rubbish, it’s awful.
In the summer we worry in the hot weather about abandoned horses being left parched without water, getting dehydrated and dying. Then in the winter, we worry about them being left with no grass, or even if there is a bit of grass it’s no good to them, there’s no goodness in it in winter. They’re so cold, with no food and just wasting away.
Kenny said it is more expensive to feed horses in the winter and with vets fees on top of that, “people just don’t want to deal with it”.
The charity receives calls day and night and volunteers are working through the festive period. Kenny said they rely on their volunteers to be generous with their time and on public donations to keep the charity running all year round.
“We have to work on the farm, we have 150 animals just on there and we are at three locations with nearly 300 animals now. The animals don’t take a day off, neither do any of the ones left abandoned in fields, so we don’t either.
Christmas can be a horrible time for a lot of people and animals, a lonely time and a cruel time.
Although the charity can not save every horse it is called to and volunteers have seen some devastating cruelty in the last 12 months, there are plenty of success stories.
Two, in particular, stuck with Martina Kenny.
“Last winter just after Christmas children in Finglas called the charity about a horse that was on the ground, who they couldn’t get back up.
“He was a foal, he was really weak God love him, it was awful. We spent three months just picking him up off the ground all the time and we have a special hoist we used to get him up and down. It was just so touch and go, we never thought he’d make it. Now he’s this fine, healthy, big fella, he’s a beauty.”
Another case Kenny spoke about was of a newborn foal who had rolled into a river. He was only a few hours old, there were loads of horses dumped in a field, we couldn’t figure out who his mother was because there were foals sucking off different mares.
“It was 12 at night and freezing cold. We got him out of the river and into the car because it was warm, he was so tiny. I didn’t think he’d survive.
“Myself and another volunteer from around 1am until 7am drove from Kildare and ended up in Dublin, we went to every single 24-hour chemist and garage looking for goats milk and a baby bottle to feed him.
“He drank the goats milk like there was no tomorrow. We ended up waking up some of the (veterinary) interns in UCD to get foal milk. He’s made it now, he’s two and a half months old and he’s amazing.”
It’s been a long and busy year for MLHR, but Kenny says: “To see them come back like that, it’s all worth it.”
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What the help is wrong in Ireland? Are there no consequences??
@Johannes Baader: No. A slap on the wrist and a meaningless warning. It’s pathetic.
@Johannes Baader: That’s the problem. A lack of adequate regulation with enforcement an harsh penalties.
@Johannes Baader: there is no consequences. The meagre few who are prosecuted in Ireland, get a manageable fine and are rarely even banned from animal ownership, which is a kick in the face to those who pursue the prosecution. Some of the cruelty cases we hear about are appalling and yet, these people are allowed continued access to animals. Many people still see animals as material objects that, when they’re bored of them, they can just throw away.
@Sirius: and also because authorities and ispca refuse to enforce chipping so they won’t have to prosecute abusers.
@marianne ryan: Is it the ISPCA’s job to enforce chipping?
@marianne ryan: unfortunately ISPCA are a charity, they can’t enforce anything, they need the government to do it
@Johannes Baader: my first thought was why is there a need for such rescue… what is wrong with people? Who does this. Beautiful animals suffering so much.
@Monika Broughill: the ISPCA isn’t even available outside of 9-5 Mon-Friday so it falls to these smaller rescues, who get a fraction of the funding that the ISPCA does, to save these abused and neglected animals.
My lovely horse rescue are amazing. They don’t close evenings and weekends like ispca and dept of agriculture. They are always the ones feeding during snow or pulling hordes out of rivers. The people paid to don’t bother showing up. Would be better if they were allowed seize animals and get rid of ispca and let go a lot of dept of agriculture vets. The grants from gov this Christmas were ridiculous. Small rescues who do all the work got 1 or 2 thousand and ispca got thousands but hardly ever show up
Well done all the volunteers in MLHR & so many other animal rescues! Angels on earth, you people are the best! More policing & penalties that are more severe might help this awful neglect.
Articles like this makes my blood boil.. fair play to all the volunteers who do an amazing job.. The *uckers that mistreat animals should be made to pay for their henious crimes..But again in this country a slap on the hand seems to be just punishment according to our aged judiciary . ( a crime in itself).. I would love if one of our TD’s would step up to the plate and put in motion a bill that would see these vile humans pay properly for the mistreatment of animal’s.. It’s nearly 2020 ffs and yet animal abuse is still widespread .
@Rory Murphy: ministers don’t care at all….they don’t even pretend to care. Out they go come the next election.
@Rory Murphy: the existing legislation isn’t even enforced. When a man kills his dog by bashing his head in in front of other dog walkers and isn’t banned from dog ownership it shows how little the establishment cares about animal welfare. FF, FG and SF see animals as a commodity and all voted against Maureen O’Sullivan’s bill to ban hare coursing. There are a few exceptions, Maureen O’Sullivan, Claire Daly, the Social Democrats and the Greens have spoken out in the Dáil but the larger parties seem to be more interested in the votes of abusers than they are about what happens to animals.
@EillieEs: add in labour who voted with fine Gael and fianna fail to continue giving 16 million to greyhound racing while homeless die in the cold and people suffer on hospital trolleys. a lot of TDs have been caught out saying they support animal welfare but then supporting cruelty
@marianne ryan: it’s so shocking isn’t it! And they dont even make any comment or reasoning for this ( not that there is any justification to be made) …they completely ignore all the questions being asked. Unbelievably arrogant. They have to go!
Will yez all belt up —-It’s our culture boss!
@John Mc Donagh: if you think animal abuse and neglect is the preserve of a particular ethic minority then you must be living under a rock, it’s just as prevalent in the settled community.
when are the garda ,the i.s.p.c.a. the government and the courts going to start enacting the law with regards to animal welfare in this country ? legislation regarding the ownership and keeping of horses was brought in a number of years ago , under that legislation horses must be microchipped ,have adequate stabling ,food supply and fresh water supply and have a minimum amount of pasture per animal to roam around in – yet everyday you can see horses tethered along side the roads with nothing but pure mud under their feet , you can clearly see where the horse has walked around in a circle as far as its tether will allow – the lack of any means of food or water there for all to see . no sign of any sort of indoor stabling ,proper bedding or even a warm blanket in the coldest of weather conditions ,freezing cold and half starved and yet no action is taken against those responsible , we were SUPPOSED to have had legislation brought in over 3 years ago over the use of ponies and horses on public roads ,legislation that would protect the animals from cruelty and unnecessary suffering ,including a ban on ‘racing’ sulkies and horses on public roads – 3 years on and still NOTHING ! then again this current shower of self indulgent tosspots won’t even provide for humans let alone animals
Well done MLH, some of irelands finest musicians too. Imagine what these guys could do with real support from public and government.
The hashtag of mylovelyhorse is an absolute disgrace, and just goes to show the undercurrent of disregard of animals that is acceptable in the at the this stage godforsaken country.
Where is all this happening? I’m a horse owner and I’m in lots of different yards, fields etc and I’ve yet to see anything remotely like neglect. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but I haven’t seen in in at least ten years.
@Seamus Murphy: Click on the tags below or have a look at the MLHR facebook page, you’re very lucky if you haven’t seen anything…
@Seamus Murphy: maybe -like a good many others – your going around with blinkers on ! get out into the housing estates , the back lanes and the main roads into our towns and cities and you will see PLENTY (unfortunately) of horses and ponies being mistreated or kept in squalid conditions , if your going around stable yards and their paddocks its highly unlikely you will see whats really going on with regards to horse ‘ownership’
People who are cruel to animals shouldn’t ever be allowed to keep any then, full stop.
It’s been a mixed year for animal welfare. In June, the government announced a phasing out of fur farming, in response to a 20 year campaign against this nightmarish practice which involves the unnatural confinement and cruel gassing of mink for the fur industry.
Unfortunately, other fur-bearing animals didn’t fare so well this year: In August the annual license permitting the capture of hares for coursing was suspended by Heritage Minister Josepha Madigan when it emerged that hares and rabbits had contracted a deadly disease that is fatal to them and highly contagious.
The Minister rightly pointed out that the RHD2 virus had wiped out large rabbit populations in China and had the potential to do the same here. But then, in response to political lobbying by coursing clubs and pressure from some backbench TDs the government allowed hare coursing to resume.
So, in addition to being chased, mauled, having their bones broken, and their frail bodies tossed about like paper dolls, the hares have the threat of an ecological catastrophe hanging over them. The Irish Hare is a sub-species of the Mountain Hare unique to Ireland. The risk of its irreversible loss to us as a result of the virus has been flagged by conservationists, but political vote-getting seems to trump concerns for its very survival as a species.
Another furry creature, one not endangered from a conservational standpoint but a victim of man’s inhumanity, is the fox. Foxhunting continues unabated in Ireland, despite having been outlawed in the country that exported it to us.
Over Christmas, hundreds of the wily mammals are hounded to exhaustion and death for sport, and provincial newspapers will connive in the ongoing cover-up of what this medieval practise really entails. Happy-clappy colour pieces will appear underneath bucolic pictures of red jacketed hunts people on horseback setting off from village squares, fronted by tail-wagging hounds.
But we never see pictures of the hunted animal having the skin ripped off its bones, or of a fox being dug out of its underground refuge to be thrown to the pack. Journalistic ethics go to ground too when it comes to reporting on this legalised animal cruelty.
Another positive for animal welfare this year was the RTE documentary on malpractice in the greyhound industry, which increased awareness of what happens to these wonderful dogs when their running days are over.
It made harrowing viewing, but better to know the truth than have the wood pulled over our eyes by slick PR whitewashing or lazy journalism.
I hope the upcoming election yields a new crop of TDs who will give the animal kingdom a fair deal.
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