Donkey Rescue in Spain

Article supplied by the Donkey Sancuary in Andalucia, Spain.

If only all rescues were as easy as Rescue 6,444 ( Tuesday 6th Feb 2008). It had already been one of those very long nights and the rescue team were looking forward to breakfast, a shower and then bed, when the rescue phone rang again, this time, with a report of a donkey wandering along a road at Almayati, by a concerned Mum, Angela Jackson, who had just been on the school run.

Calls about animals wandering loose are fairly frequent, and when we are short of rescue volunteers and the call call is not, what we call a verified call from the police asking us to attend as they can confirm that the animal is in danger or is itself a danger to road users, we have to think about the best use of our limited resources.

When a call comes from a concerned member of the public, we have the usual dilemma of working out whither we should remain on stand by for the Guardia in case of an injured animal on the road, or whither we can afford to take the chance and send the very tired and overworked rescue team on another call, especially as in this case, at the end of a 24 hour shift they had already undertaken 4 overnight calls.

Quite a lot of our calls are about loose animals, and 99 times out of a hundred, when we attend and put a head collar and rope on the wandering animal and make it safe, and set off to try and find the owner, we find that when we return to the animal, it is usually already been collected by its owner, and, as a result, we can lose up to 30 head collars and ropes a month, and at 15 or so Euro a time, it is 450 Euro we can ill afford each month , so when we are all tired and weary and wondering if we can afford another head collar and rope as well as an extra call out, we are often inclined to ask if the caller can just make the animal safe somewhere, as the owner will turn up, sooner or later, but we always try to then visit when we can, often just a few hours later.

But in this case, it sounded as though Angela knew an exhausted, abandoned and old donkey, so we asked her to tie it up until we got there. When we arrived at the industrial warehouse where she had left it, needless to say it had gone, but we asked inside and the owner, Pepi who said he had taken it to a field for safety, and off we went in convey (joined by Angela and a friend) and here indeed was an elderly and very tired donkey, and when we went to try and check his age (using his teeth) we found the poor old boy only had 3 teeth left ! Pepi seemed to think it was just an elderly donkey that had been used by Gypsies on fairground duties, and when they recently left, he was left behind. Certainly when we drove the rescue truck and trailer up and into the field, he perked his ears up, and just walked straight into the rescue trailer. !


When we got to Nerja, our stand by vet Nico was waiting for us and confirmed that not only was he old, exhausted, hungry, overworked and lacking in teeth, but he had a terrible infection in his coat which means he had to be isolated away from all other animals and given an expensive course of medication and twice daily shampoos for the next 21 days, but we can happily report that he is a lovely and very gentle old boy and is well on his way to the first stage of recovery – Angela Who reported him asked if we could call him Capitan, and we were pleased to do so, but he will need lots of gentle exercise, so if there is any gentle elderly donkey walkers around, please drop in and see us as daily gentle exercise is essential for his long term recovery, especially as he is in the isolation pen and really needs that little bit of extra TLC and attention, as well as exercise.