ARCH has recently rescued four horses from Huelva who were in a pitiable state with no food or water.
All four – two mares and two geldings – have survived the critical first two weeks at the Centre. They are chipped so we know their names and their ages. Their owner obviously had little imagination. The younger grey mare (born in 2021) is called Torda (grey in Spanish); the dun gelding (born in 2020) is Bayete (little dun, baya being the Spanish for dun)); the grey gelding (born in 2021) is called Macho Castrado (gelding), we have named him MC for short! The palomino mare is, no surprise, Perla (capa perla being Spanish for palomino).
The youngsters are very malnourished but are not giving us great cause for concern. They are understandably shy and do not appear to have had much, if any, sympathetic handling in their short lives. But we have had worse cases and are confident that they will thrive with care and time.
Perla is a different case. According to her papers she was born in 2007 but her teeth would suggest she is older. Her skeletal frame is not just the result of starvation. She has an impacted tooth which must make it painful for her to eat. Our vet thinks that this problem is four or five years old, and it has damaged the jawbone. She will need specialised surgery at the veterinary hospital to extract it as the operation could break the jaw and need wiring. Added to this she suffered a miscarriage (a six-month stallion foal), being just too weak to nourish the baby. Consequently, she struggled to get to her feet and the ARCH team have had to help her. She is now upright and eating and one piece of good news is that her blood tests came back clear. We won’t give up on her.
