The owner of a horse found exhausted, injured and tangled in fencing said she cannot believe the law allows public sale and use of the fireworks that caused the incident.
Hailey Weston bought eight-year-old PRE gelding Cappy at the start of this year to do dressage, but he is now very lame and she does not know if he will recover. He was found on Sunday morning (12 November).
“This needs to stop,” Hailey told H&H. “If the people had told us they were having fireworks so close, we could have moved them; I’ve got empty stables. But they did it again the next night as well.”
Hailey, who owns a livery yard, said the owner of another horse found Cappy on Sunday morning. He had gone through the hedge of his own field, then got his hind leg caught in stock fencing surrounding a sheep field.
“She thought he was dead,” Hailey said. “She called me and when I got there, he lifted his head so I thought ‘He’s not dead. But he’s not in a good way’. They think he’d been there 10 or 11 hours.”
The churned ground around where Cappy was lying show the efforts he had made to get up, but to no avail.
“The right hind was stuck; it’s that one he’s still not really putting any weight on,” Hailey said. “That’s not really marked but the left hind is covered in almost friction burns, where he must have been kicking himself for hours as he tried to get free.
“He must have been so terrified; he’d gone through such a thick blackthorn hedge, you couldn’t even see a gap.”
Hailey called for help, and some 45 to 50 firefighters turned up, including animal rescue specialists, but it took two hours to free Cappy and get him on his feet.
“He was absolutely exhausted,” she said. “He’s got big haematomas on his chest and stomach, numerous cuts and nerve damage. He’s on four bute a day and still as lame as he was; the vet said to give it a week and if he’s no better, we’ll X-ray. He’s in a very bad way.”
Hailey said she called the police, who said there was nothing they could do. She intends to approach the people responsible but is not convinced this will have any effect.
“They’re never going to ban fireworks but I don’t see why they can’t only sell silent ones to the public,” she said. “I still think it’s beyond belief that anyone can just go and buy explosives in a shop.”
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