CASE HISTORIES

Here a few stories — with and without happy ending — about our “clients”. Please click on the links below for details:

The horse was in poor health when we took this picture.

A story without a happy ending

The man who called us about this wished to remain anonymous. He complained about a horse on an empty lot at the beach in Playa Hermosa. As the condition of the horse appeared to be terrible, we immediately went there to see the animal. It was even worse than we could imagine. There was no grass, no hay, no water, no shade – the horse was just skin and bones with big sad eyes, and we had the feeling that this horse had already given up living.

After asking around and finally finding an owner, we offered to cover all vet and food costs for the horse, with the condition that he would pay us 50% back whenever he can. The owner is not poor – he lives in a nice house, has a job, with his own farm and a car, which is a kind of luxury here. But he was not willing to pay any money for his horse, and the only thing we could do was to convince him to give the animal to us, which he did.  Unfortunately our help came too late – next morning, when Patricia — our horse expert — went to feed him, the animal was dead and the owner was already digging a hole to bury it. 

As there are laws in Costa Rica which punish animal cruelty, we called the police, found witnesses which would testify that the horse was there for more than 2 months without food and shelter, and we denounced the owner. Our local police is always very cooperative so we hoped to win the case. But unfortunately the judge didn’t agree with us, and we lost. The owner left the court without paying any consequence for his cruelty.

Did you have similar experiences? Please Tell us your story.