Pony tale

One evening a friend, a senior journalist and I were on our way to a meeting when we spotted a horse lying almost still on the road side. It was a quiet residential area and the occasional passersby ignored the horse thinking it may be sleeping. We stopped the car and checked on the horse. It didn’t want to move and seemed to be in pain. My friend tried contacting a government veterinary doctor and I called a friend who works at People For Animals (PFA). Meanwhile the senior was petting the horse hoping that it may ease its pain.

After a while, a volunteer from PFA arrived with a vet. They got the horse on its feet only to discover that it had a growth on one of its back hoof. It was not able to walk. The vet gave it a painkiller and they called for an ambulance to take the horse to PFA shelter.

That night I got a call from PFA saying the horse was pregnant. She gave birth to a male pony soon. We were elated. We went to the shelter the next day to adopt the pony and the mother. They hadn’t operated on her hoof since she was feeding the pony and it was not a good time for medicines.

It is almost three months now and the pony is growing up healthy, thanks to PFA. And the mother, though limping a little, is much better. My PFA friend says he has named the mother and pony after me and my friend!

My friend wrote a news article on the rescued horse and the birth. We thought that the news would help make people aware that they too can and must help such animals in need and that PFA’s number will help them in doing so. But what we heard from PFA was the opposite. People had started calling them demanding that PFA take their pets (even healthy ones) as they could not care for them anymore.

And worst of all was that as many as 20 people had contacted PFA saying they were the owners of the horse and that they wanted to take only the pony (since it was a male). PFA however did not yield to their pressure and argued that if the horse was really theirs then they would not have left her to die.

It made us realize that we have a big role to play in changing the mindset of people and we still have a long way to go in achieving it.