Equine project
Stefano and CezarTwo stories of poverty and misery
It took 2 months to take away Stefano from an inhuman life. He lived chained in a shack, malnourished and with unbearable pain caused by very severe arthritis. His master, a poor old man with psychiatric problems living in a village, did not want to give up the animal and it took the intervention of the police, of the local vet department and even of the Mayor to solve the situation.
Now Stefano is in our care and he is much better. We fixed his hooves and we are treating his arthritis with anti-inflammatories.
He is about 30 years old and after a lifetime of work, eventually he will spend his last days with us.
A similar story is that of Cezar, a 25 years old working horse.
Neighbors claim that he was regularly beaten by his master who did not feed him adequately and forced him to haul heavy carts, despite being old and exhausted.
Also in this case the intervention of the local police was fundamental and it was precisely the agents who reported the case and then convinced the owner to give us the poor horse. The man will have no fine for the treatment given to Cezar: the bureaucratic procedure for administering the sanction would be too long and therefore the crime was “remedied” by the immediate cession alone. Sometimes these kind of compromises are necessary in Romania, where bureaucracy can be a real enemy of animal welfare.
