Hey there Delilah!
Each and every rescue horse has it’s own story to tell. Delilah’s story was one of the most heart breaking , angering and distressful we have ever experienced. To understand, you have to feel the scene. In winter 2016, we got a call about a field of horses, no food, no water, no care. With every passing day another passed away, another statistic. Upon arriving at the field we could see the urgency and action needed to be taken now. Bones scattered the area, walking further and further in we were met with decomposing carcasses, young horses, old horses all shapes and sizes, all succumbed to the same fate.
As we looked around we set about rescuing the living ones, no easy task in such a sparce area but we perservered and managed to get the remaining 9, weak, weary, shaking with cold and hunger we loaded them one by one, mammys and babies, youngsters and older ladies all made as cosy as possible on the lorry. We were afraid of the journey so a snail’s pace back to longford, there was no choice, we couldn’t leave them in what could only be described as a graveyard.
The next week is one that will haunt us all at hungry horse, an endless round of lifting weak horses, 5 in total, helping them get their footing, willing them to fight. Fight back and to see the future but sadly for these 5, that future wasn’t to be. More tears were cried during their time at HHO than we ever thought possible. We’re not easily shocked, or startled, we’ve seen things that we never believed we would but one by One, we lost them, we were too late.
And then there were 4, scrawny, hungry, saddened horses reaching to us to help them. So we swallowed out tears and put the horrors behind us and kept it together for their sake. Delilah being one of them, we distinctly remember watching Delilah and saying ‘at least she ia not in as bad a state as the others, she will make it’ and as those words lingered in the air a sudden realisation dawned on us- why were we accepting this? We shouldn’t be drawing comparisons to her comrades, here In front of us stood a mare, who you could count every Rib, her back bone protruding, covered in rain rash, yet we had said ‘at least she’s not as bad as the others’- despite everything that had happened a new anger boiled inside us, for Delilah and her remaining companions, these horses should have had the world at their feet but they were left to rot and die.
Luckily Delilah and her remaining friends began to thrive, with good care and some compassion. Soon we hardly recognised them, their lifelessness only a distant memory, day in day out they were stronger until the day each one of them went home.
Home to their families, the hell they went through just a distant memory. As we loaded Delilah on to a lorry Germany bound, we couldn’t help but be proud of her, after everything, she oozed with confidence, her trusting nature a testament to the mare she always was, even when she was suffering so badly. Delilah left us over a year ago now, she settled in to her home and gives great joy to her family, we can’t help but smile when we get sent photos of our girls new life- being the princess we always knew she was.
What is it they say? One man’s rubbish.
