Can you help Egypt's tourist horses?

Since the instability in Egypt, there has been a dramatic decline in tourism & as a result, the locals are no longer able to feed their horses which were never in fantastic condition anyway.

A friend of mine has gathered a team together of vets, vet nurses & other experienced rehab folk & is heading up there in March 2012 to help out.

There's more info. on these horses here www.esmaegypt.org/ (ESMA is the main group they're going to help) & this www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=233443216...!/princefluffykareem is the Facebook page of another group of European tourists who have stepped in & rescued some of these horses themselves.

The "Kiwi Care Team" will be assisting these & other groups & providing much needed medical supplies, etc.

They have a 'wish list' of the things they need on their Facebook page - www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=233443216...Team/101972896583905

If you can't help with $$ or product, perhaps you could sew some synthetic sheepskin nose guards to put over the chain halters?

Any & all help is MUCH appreciated!

on it .. thanks for posting...

i am appalled at the condition of these poor tourist horses.. its not just egypt.. i have recently been in Greece and the plight of the mules in santorini is heart breaking.. i actually went somewhat berserk at one of the mule handlers when i was there i was so livid []..
hauling the mules around by their beautiful big ears and bashing them with a massive stick to chase them up and down the steep cliffs..emm his stick got taken off him and was at the bottom of the cliff before his mules..

Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse worldwide as economies continue to collapse & people get poorer.

That is the reason so many of our returning ANZAC cavalrymen shot their horses before they left the Middle East after WWI.

igor;395432 wrote: That is the reason so many of our returning ANZAC cavalrymen shot their horses before they left the Middle East after WWI.

What? How on earth does a lack of tourists & therefore starving horses have ANYTHING to do with horses being shot rather than left after WWII?

They shot all of their horses 'cause they couldn't bring them home & they didn't want to abandon thousands of horses all in one go in a foreign country & make them their problem.

It's a pretty tenuous & totally inaccurate connection between the two situations! :rolleyes:

This is simple economics; these people in Cairo rely on the tourist trade to the pyramids for survival. Since the unrest in Egypt, the tourist trade has dried up & these people can't feed themselves or their kids let alone their horses. Their situation has been deteriorating rapidly for months now. These people have fed their horses everything they had & now they have nothing so they're bringing them to feed stations set up by aid groups, to feed & treat them but the situation is so dire, it's overwhelmed the aid groups too. They have people queued up at feed stations everyday & they have nothing to give them.

The cavalrymen didn't trust the locals welfare standards then to let them get their hands on the horses they had ridden through the war and knew and loved. Rather than leave them to be mistreated by a bunch of miserable wogs (This was the 1910's, you could call the natives wogs without having PC nancyboys screaming about it) they shot them.

Looking at the state of the horses in Egypt now, I would have been shooting mine too. I'd be more prone now to donating a few boxes of 12G shells to use on the horses there than anything else. Maybe use them on a few owners too.

Oh gosh.. I wish I could rescue all the puppies on that site too..

Thank you Kiwi.

A mouthful of hay every now and again is no help - it's just prolonging the misery.
I love animals, and might resort to similar tactics, steph, when faced with animal misstreatment.
But this situation CANNOT be solved with the donation of some food or some weeks of vet treatment.
Even the SPCA resorts to putting down animals when there is no other way to helping them. I'm with igor and kiwi; a bullet is way more humane than to prolong their suffering.

igor;395432 wrote: That is the reason so many of our returning ANZAC cavalrymen shot their horses before they left the Middle East after WWI.

Kiwi303;395503 wrote: The cavalrymen didn't trust the locals welfare standards then to let them get their hands on the horses they had ridden through the war and knew and loved. Rather than leave them to be mistreated by a bunch of miserable wogs (This was the 1910's, you could call the natives wogs without having PC nancyboys screaming about it) they shot them.

Looking at the state of the horses in Egypt now, I would have been shooting mine too. I'd be more prone now to donating a few boxes of 12G shells to use on the horses there than anything else. Maybe use them on a few owners too.

I knew what you meant Igor and Kiwi's given reason is exactly why it happened. At the end of the war it was impossible to ship that many troops and horses back to their homes and the cavalry knew exactly what would be in store for their horses if they left them. It had nothing do do with leaving a problem for somebody else to sort out.

Sorry, I agree fully with the above.

Cheers,
Ronnie

Maybe you guys already know about 'Bess' , Colonel Guy Powles' horse who went from NZ to the First World War.
Of the 10,000 horses that went from Nz to World War I, only Bess returned. The Colonel insisted she be shipped back.
(Of the 8000 horses taken to South Africa in the Boer War, also only one returned - 'Major'.
Bess is buried at Flock House near Bulls.
Quite symbolically touching, in my opinion - like the One Horse to Stand Proudly for All.
Here's a pic of her grave -
www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/memorial-bess-horse

Ed

This is not a new situation. When we were stuck in Luxor for a week in 2007 I started entertaining myself by standing outside the tourist hotels and loudly commenting on the reasons why I would or would not choose to ride in a carriage with particular drivers. Basically educating the tourists on what were well cared for animals so they could choose good operators. That's something these rescue groups urgently need to do instead of being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. It's also the quickest way to ensure better conditions for the animals. All it takes is a loud voice and thick skin.

The drivers are really sneaky tho - most mares are put in foal so that they look round and fat. Obviously this leads to even more problems. It's not lack of tourists that's the problem - that just makes an already very bad situation worse.

I saw the whole of North Africa, and the animal situation for horses donkeys and mules is very bad for about 25%, marginal for another 40% or so and the remaining 35% seemed fine.

I would never donate to a rescue organisation without looking into what they do. I breaks my heart to see the animals there, but you simply cannot pour the resources into the chronic cases that they do without leaving that 40% marginal group in peril. They have got to start making tougher decisions before I'll fund them (FWIW I do support several, I'm not made of stone).

Charities that do things like provide water troughs along the Corniche are doing much more important work than putting a lot of resource into nursing a very sick animal. Helping and supporting those places that do try is the most important thing for me.

Sidebar: I hired a horse for the afternoon in Dahab - it turned out to be a very well performed endurance mare, and before I hired her they were more than happy to show me round the stables. Despite having a mare and foal down by the beach (she had hay and water available) to 'lure' tourists, that mare was not available for hire because she was nursing. Making info available to tourists on the good operators like these is more important - drive the dodgy ones out!

Anyone interested in more about Bess, there is a thread I started last year about the book that has been written about her. www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/vforum/showthre...23586&highlight=bess

I know the welfare standards in Egypt & surrounding areas have never been flash but as you can see, the situation is now particularly dire. Welfare standards there have certainly improved since WWII though when the locals were in a similar situation due to war.

My mother was in Cairo less than 3 x years ago & she took LOTS of photos of the pyramid horses. She was surprised at how good their condition was!

I agree that a lot of these horses should be PTS & hopefully, the vets will be able to educate to do so, while they're there. They're hoping to return on a regular basis to help the local charities who are currently overwhelmed.

Many of these horses are quite recoverable though & many were also in reasonable condition previously. Aid groups have already been doing a lot to educate horse owners over the past few years. Most people are very keen to learn & to replace ill fitting gear & chains with padded nosebands & saddle blankets. In a lot of cases, it's not that these people don't want to do right by their horses, it's that they don't have the money to. They can't afford leather for instance & many WERE doing right by their horses previously. There are men in tears at the feed stations 'cause they can't feed their horses & they're covered in sores. There are also men who shouldn't have horses. Thankfully, these men are declining due to better educated peer pressure but it's a slow moving change. Unfortunately, this situation has pretty much halted it!

The team is also hoping to generate publicity to encourage tourists back to the area too. The Egyptians on the whole are very proud of their Arabian horses & they do like them to be in reasonable condition. By educating from both sides; the Egyptians in horse welfare & the tourists to only use those horses that ARE in reasonable condition, they can make a HUGE difference. This approach was already enjoying considerable success prior to the current situation.

We're not talking about whipping in for week's vet treatment. Yes, they'll be doing that & taking much needed suppiles BUT they'll also be taking LOTS of comfortable gear to FIT horses so that longterm, these horses will be better off. The person organising all of this is one of those who was on the 60 Minutes programme about the illegal dog meat trade in the Phillipines just recently.

I wouldn't expect anyone to donate to something without checking it out first, that would be foolish! That's why I put it here, so you can check it out. If you don't want to support it for whatever reason, then don't. []

The way I see it, there are horses in need. Whether that need be assistance to live or assistance to die will be determined by the vets but only if they can get there.

As for Bess, we did quite a bit of research into that story as there was some talk that she was a Kaimanawa horse. She was a lucky horse!

Glopony, Kiwi303 and I were referring to World War One in our posts, not World War Two.