December 2007 • VOLUME 28 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

A key factor in any animal's health is how it is cared for by humans - and that's why working with and training people is so core to their work. The Brooke’s mobile vet teams and community animal health workers, and their partner organisations worldwide, provide free treatment to animals and train animal owners, local healers, farriers, saddlers, feed sellers, harness and cart makers. This is mutual benefit personified: healthy, properly fed and cared-for animals who can work harder for longer and support the many people in each family who rely on them for everything, often with new jobs and small industries created locally.

There are many ways to help the Brooke’s work, even a small donation can bring relief to a hard-working donkey, save a family’s precious mule, improve the lot of a Cairo carriage horse.

Yes, teaching a man to fish is infinitely better than just feeding him for one day and forgetting about him……

http://www.thebrooke.org/

"I think the Brooke is different because it reaches across state boundaries, countries, religions, politics, global finance. And it works through the owners, the real individuals, and the animals upon which they rely to be able to just survive; for me at any rate it has been a relief to find a way in which my small financial contribution can go to both humans and animals, because I cannot separate the needs and dependence one from the other, I can't see how one can be saved at the expense of the other, neither can be considered more important or less important, they are utterly intertwined."

A young boy living in India, thirteen years old, with three brothers and four sisters, has worked since he was ten, even though he completely lost the use of his left leg at the age of five to polio. He works with Reda, his father’s cart horse and brings in 150 rupees compared to an average 180 rupees his father brings in daily. Reda in this way not only provides for the family, this cart horse provides a disabled boy with the pride to be able to help support his family rather than having them provide for him. He will tell anyone who asks that he loves his pony and that his pony loves him back.

The Brooke estimate that the 650,000 animals they help every year support as many as three million people. These people depend on their animals.

Malnutrition is often a problem faced. Malnutrition not because they don’t feed their horses always but because they don’t know about meeting certain nutritional requirements. Losing an animal can often mean losing the family income and can be absolutely devastating.

Sometimes it can be simple things, sometimes it can be help and veterinary care such as in the case of Bandhu.

Bandhu works hard in a brick kiln carrying bricks all day, every day. The kilns are such hazardous places for the horses and donkeys who work there, and Bandhu was badly hurt. He had suffered an injury to his eye – not only was it causing him great pain, but he could no longer open it, so his vision was impaired too. Bandhu (whose name means 'helper') had no choice but to trust his young owner to see for him, and keep him out of danger.

Subhas, Bandhu’s owner, had noticed his horse’s eye problem and he sought treatment for it at a local pharmacy. The pharmacist gave Subhas some medicine, which he was told would help the eye heal; but the caustic chemical he prescribed only made matters worse, and may even have caused the corneal ulcer that gave Bandhu such terrible pain.

Thankfully, one of the Brooke’s community-based team visited the area where Bandhu and Subhas work. He couldn’t fail to notice the terrible condition of this poor horse, and persuaded Subhas to bring him to the local Brooke treatment site. Here, Brooke Vet, Dr Thanammal Naidu attempted to examine Bandhu's weeping eye but sadly the poor horse was suffering so much that she couldn’t even open it – he was clearly in terrible pain.

Local anaesthetic relieved his agony, and let him open his eye so that Dr Thanammal could diagnose the problem and start treatment for his corneal ulcer. Saving Bandhu from blindness probably saved his life too.

With proper veterinary care from the Brooke, Bandhu’s eye soon started to heal and his sight was saved. Brooke vets showed Subhas the importance of looking after his horse’s eyes – after all, if Bandhu cannot work then he cannot earn money for Subhas and his family.

Or helping in the case of making a difference to faithful Farah's impossible job.

For seven years, Gaber Omran’s donkey Farah had done the seemingly impossible. Each day, at 7am, Gaber would harness Farah into his cart and then load it with up to 35 gas cylinders, each weighing a staggering 40kg.

He would give Farah no breakfast - fodder cost money and Gaber was desperately poor. He didn’t even give his animal a drink of water.

Instead, hungry and parched, the faithful donkey would begin hauling his terrible load - between 1,200 and 1,400kg - through the streets of Marsa Matrouh, Egypt, as Gaber went around selling the cylinders. Farah would pull his backbreaking load for the next 11 hours without rest, dragging the cylinders over rough, pot-holed roads and up agonising hills, in the cold of winter and the furnace heat of summer. By the time his working day ended at 6pm he had hauled the cart more than 30 miles.

Back at Gaber’s humble home Farah would get a meagre evening meal: a small amount of straw and barley. And water, at last.

After seven years of this, the impossible caught up with Farah.

His walking became sluggish and erratic. His head began to droop, his ears flattened. Then the shaking began, rippling down his stick thin legs. One day he collapsed in his harness. He collapsed again and again. His eyes became fixed, staring at nothing.

Gaber was horrified. He had been too busy trying to scrape a living to notice Farah’s decline. In desperation he led the stricken donkey to the Brooke’s Matrouh clinic.


Seldom had the Brooke vets seen such chronic exhaustion in a working animal. It was so severe they took in Farah as an in-patient. They gave him fluid therapy and strengthening medicines, plenty of thirst-quenching water, and the fresh, healthy and nutritious food his body had craved for so long. After two days his head began to lift. He was recovering.

Then the vets began the second phase of the treatment: teaching Gaber how to care for Farah properly. They told him to water Farah throughout the day - and gave him a bucket for the purpose. They explained the vital importance of regular rests, and to give Farah a break in the mid-day heat. They also provided him with a comb to ensure that Farah was properly groomed. Above all, they urged Gaber to reduce the crippling loads.


Today Farah’s working day has improved enormously. Gaber now has a better understanding of how to look after his hardworking animal, and ensures that there are never more than 20 cylinders on the cart. ‘The change in him is unbelievable,’ he says.

Farah's story shows just how challenging the jobs that loyal horses, donkeys and mules do can be.

Brooke mobile vet and animal welfare teams are now reaching thousands of communities with our practical, tested approach - bringing compassionate care and treatments to animals when they are needed, and vital training to their owners and their communities.

In return, owners are discovering that cared-for animals, who have regular rest, shade and water, are more productive long-term because they are healthier and happier - a message they're eagerly passing on to their neighbours.

The Brooke message is uplifting: that even the hardest-worked can be happy and healthy, if given the care and respect they deserve.

Helping people, helping horses, helping the lives of the horses, helping the lives of the people. Their horses are their lives, as once our lives depended on our horses.