Foal killed by truck – 23rd of December 2009

This afternoon at 2.30 pm we received a phone call about a foal that was lying injured alongside the road in the Mexico-neighbourhood. In the middle of the day, on a dirt road,

in a neighbourhood full of houses, this foal was hit by a truck. The driver of the truck did not stop. Of course Marion and Marina immediately went over to help the poor little donkey. Too bad the foal had a broken hind leg and severe internal bleedings. To stop her suffering as soon as possible, we put her in the back of our pickup car and took her to the vet to have her put to sleep. The mother-donkey watched us from a save distance, bewildered of what we did with her child. Again a dramatic event, of which we’ve had already too much lately…

A gift from Hoogvliet Supermarket – 21st of December 2009

Every day the workers in our donkey sanctuary have to cut fruits, vegetables and bread. Not only for our donkeys, but also for the iguanas and tortoises that live in our park. A simple

job, that however was made difficult, as we only had bad knives to work with. Of course we cannot afford us a good set of knives, for we already have problems paying for the food of our donkeys. Recently Hoogvliet Supermarket in Holland had a promotion: their customers could earn an excellent set of kitchen knives. When they found out that we could do with this very much, but did not have money to buy such ‘luxury’, they voluntarily gave us a set of knives for free. Thank you Hoogvliet supermarket, for this nice and very useful gift!

18th of February 2010 – hay from Holland thanks to GLE Lines

In December we told you about the big problems we had buying hay for our donkeys. For many years we imported hay from Venezuela, but suddenly deliveries from this country were no longer possible. Getting hay from the Netherlands was no option either, considering the huge additional sea transportation costs that we are not able to pay for. We were in desperate need, as we only had for one week of hay left in stock. We already gave

half portions of hay to our donkeys and sometimes even fed them paper boxes as an alternative stomach filling. Thank goodness GLE Lines, our regular sea transportation company in Holland, was willing to help us out of a scrape. When we would buy the hay ourselves in Holland, GLE Lines would once ship this in a big container to Bonaire for free. And of course so we did. A 40 feet container was completely filled up with bales of hay and arrived at our sanctuary at the beginning of January. The hay from Holland is

much more nutritious and tasteful than hay from Venezuela. The donkeys got already exited by only smelling this delicious treat! Thanks to the higher nutritional value we could feed smaller portions of hay and so we were able to feed the donkeys for several weeks with this Dutch hay. In the meantime a new supplier from Venezuela approached us. He says that he will be able to deliver us hay for a reasonable price from Venezuela despite all new export restrictions. He indeed brought us a first delivery already. We hope this will turn out to be a structural solution. If we cannot buy hay for our donkeys at a reasonable price, we will not be able to keep them alive. In fact we already had nightmares about putting to sleep hundreds of healthy donkeys just because of a lack of money respectively food. Hopefully it will never be necessary to do so and you will be willing to (continue to) help us taking care for the donkeys!

19th of February 2010 – jenny dies from car hit, foal orphaned

Yesterday evening a jenny was hit by a car near Sabadeco. The owners of an holiday house nearby found the mare lying bleeding on the street. Besides a young foal was standing helplessly next to her badly injured donkey mum. They looked up the number of any given vet, gave him a call and asked him to come. The vet arrived at the scene and gave two

painkilling injections to the mare. Next he dragged the donkey to the side of the street, where he left her together with her foal. According to the vet, the mare would recover and stand up again. However early on Friday morning the helpful people still saw the donkey lying alongside the road, accompanied by her foal. Through the police we were called upon. They told us that the jenny was dead, but that we had to pick up her foal before she would be hit by a car as well. Of course we immediately went over. To our abomination

the jenny turned out not to be dead at all. She had severe internal injuries and head injuries and so she had been suffering needlessly all night long. It was terrible to watch this donkey fighting for her life in vain and her foal standing next to her helplessly. We asked for another vet, the one we always cooperate with, to come for help. To bad he had no other option but to put her to sleep. We took the orphaned foal to our sanctuary and placed her in our ‘special care meadow’. We will raise her now. We named her after the lady that helped us at the scene of the accident: Meriam. By the way, we are astonished by the fact that the vet who was called upon directly after the crash did not offer more adequate help to the poor donkey. He just left her badly wounded alongside the road, which did also endanger the life of the little foal. Unfortunately this is not the first disagreeable incident concerning this one specific vet, so in concertation with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals we informed the police about his ‘abstention of providing the necessary medical care’.