Yet another mare has fallen victim to abuse. Last week the mare, which was kept with other horses in the new stable area Kjóavellir in Kópavogur, was found to have a deep cut to its inner reproductive organs and another shallower cut to its outer organs.
An Icelandic horse. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
When the mare was put out into the paddock on Tuesday evening the stable’s owners noticed blood dripping from its rear end as it started moving around, visir.is reports.
Katrín Hardardóttir, veterinarian at the animal hospital in Vídidalur, Reykjavík, was called out and has cared for the mare since. “It was very sore and obviously in a lot of pain,” she described.
She added that everything indicated that the cuts were made by humans. Her suspicion has also been confirmed by another veterinarian who examined the mare.
The mare’s owners reported the abuse to the Reykjavík Metropolitan Police on Thursday; it is the fourth case of horse abuse to be reported in the past few months.
The stable’s owners are responsible for the horses’ care in the evenings but employ someone else to feed them in the mornings, as is common in stable areas.
They say that they hid a spare key to the stable and believe that the animal abuser(s) observed them and discovered the key’s hiding place. The stable is new and shouldn’t be accessible otherwise.
The stable’s owners pointed out that there are many horses in their stable, including seven mares. However, most of them are relatively untamed and timid, and so the perpetrator may have had difficulties approaching them. That does not apply to the mare that was abused; it is tame and easily approachable.
They advise other stable owners to keep their stables locked, change locks if keys have been lost, don’t keep spare keys outside the stables and report suspicious individuals. Horse owners have also been advised to monitor horses in pastures.
Click here to read more about the horse abuse.
ESA
