Horse rescuer in Egypt fends off looters then befriends them
by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris
Egyptian demonstrators succeeded in their goal of ousting President Hosni Mubarak, but the country’s turmoil continues, taking its toll on animals as well as humans.
Now read her account of her successful negotiation for the return of much of the stolen feed.
ESMA Sartain at head of horse. Photo Credit: ESMA
ESMA Sartain in stall with horse
Report from Beth Sartain (continued):
Word started to go around the village about what had happened. All the ESMA and I volunteers spent hours talking to people and visiting stables to explain our situation. The owners were desperate for help and saw that if they wanted long term help the food had to be returned to us.
While we were waiting for the food to be returned we all kept busy by treating wounds as best we could with limited medical supplies. We also arranged for a local farrier to attend one stable whose horses hooves were desperately in need of attention. The owner simply had no cash to pay the farrier. He trimmed 10 horses feet while we were there.
One of the ESMA volunteers is a homeopathic practitioner who administered as many remedies as she could to horses in need.
All the volunteers then returned to a central point in the village where people had been returning the feed too. Forty sacks were stolen from the truck in the morning. We received 28 sacks back by the afternoon and the stable owners, who did actually have enough food for their horses, then donated to us a further 26 sacks of food.
They were also confident we will get more sacks returned as they now know we aim to help long-term.
Katerina Lorenzatos Makris is the author of 17 novels for publishers including Avon, E.P. Dutton, and Simon & Schuster, and hundreds of articles for publications such as National Geographic Traveler, San Francisco Chronicle, and Veggie Life. She wrote a teleplay for CBS and short fiction for The Bark magazine. With coauthor Shelley Frost, she wrote Your Adopted Dog (The Lyons Press). Holding a B.A. in Environmental Science Studies and a lifelong interest in animal issues, she spends a lot of her time battling a severe addiction to dogs.
