Horses Without Carriages International www.horseswithoutcarriages.org

Over the years that followed, CHAI exposed one case after another of severe horse abuse in Jaffa to raise public consciousness about the misery hiding behind rusty sheet metal fences, in small, filthy, dark barns, and on narrow streets leading to and from the marketplace every Friday.

En route to a meeting one day, I was riding through Jaffa in a taxi when I saw a sight so horrific, I jumped out and left people at the meeting wondering why I never arrived. Every bone in the body of the horse before me showed through his skin. Blood flowed from deep gouges on his knees, likely the result of repeated falls from pulling a cart too heavy for his skeletal frame. An improperly fitting harness had rubbed his skin raw in several places and his body was covered in scars, likely from beatings. More than his physical state, it was his eyes that steeled a determination in me to do whatever it took to get him away from his abuser. They were the eyes of a being whose reality was too painful to bear - vacant, focused elsewhere, devoid of spirit. I was looking at a ghost.

I offered to buy him. The owner's demand was excessive, but I couldn't risk losing out on the opportunity to free him. After some haggling, we struck a bargain. The following Saturday, with the help of an American woman who we had helped start a shelter for dogs, and another American woman who owned a horse trailer, we entered the drug and crime-infested neighborhood where the horse was being kept. As his owner led him to the trailer, he stretched out his neck to reach a blade of grass, and was roughly yanked back. He was denied even this small pleasure. Fearing the owner would grab the money and not let go of the horse or grab him back, we quickly made the exchange, loaded the horse into the trailer and sped away. We named him Saturday, because on that day, his new life began.

As we bathed him to remove layers of dirt, we became aware that every inch of his body hurt. Past experience told him that to resist would result in a thrashing, so he stood absolutely still and allowed us to finish. The farrier told us nails had been driven into the soft part of his feet to keep him from slipping while hauling the overloaded cart and his feet had become badly infected. Every step he took was agony. This was the worst case he had ever seen, the farrier said, and agreed to provide free care for a year. The equine veterinarian who treated him said he was 250 pounds underweight and deficient in protein. Most likely, he was fed only broken pieces of fruit and vegetables that could not be sold. The veterinary school used him as a demonstration to students of the worst that can happen to a horse and provided certain tests gratis.

On CHAI's behalf, the veterinarian wrote a report and letter to municipal vet, Zvi Galin, detailing Saturday's condition and appealing to him to seize a second horse owned by the same man. Galin refused to act, claiming a policeman had seen the second horse and said he looked fine. It is difficult to get a policeman to investigate a complaint about a non-human animal and even when they do, they have no training to assess what they are seeing. How many more such cases would we have to expose before the municipality would act to stop the cruelty?

We sent the municipal vet video footage of a mother and baby horse reduced to skin and bones, standing in garbage in the sun, without shade or water, along with a report by an equine vet explaining the danger of tetanus to animals standing among rusty pieces of metal. Again, Galin refused to act, later using the excuse that he could not verify when the video was taken, though all he had to do was go to the address and see the horses for himself.

Despite these disappointments and more, we did not give up. Following are some highlights from our work over the years:

• November 1999 - CHAI sponsored the first conference in Israel on Animal Shelter Management for veterinarians responsible for municipal pounds, and for heads of shelters and their workers. The two-day event, held at the Koret Veterinary School, attracted an audience from all over the country. The topic of how to identify horse abuse was included in the Animal Shelter Management Manual we distributed in Hebrew, English and Arabic. Later, the information was produced and distributed as a separate manual in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, called Horses - Standards of Care and of their Work Environment. CHAI urged the Veterinary Services to provide training to police and municipal veterinarians on this topic, and the first such class was finally held.
• 2001 - CHAI's sister charity in Israel, Hakol Chai, reported a major abuser of horses in Jaffa, the old part of Tel Aviv, to municipal and national authorities, but as usual, they took no action. The owner, a man named Nissim, starved and sold horses, provided no veterinary care, and even hacked them apart with an axe in front of each other and sold their meat in the market as beef. After undercover video of the abuse aired on tv, the authorities at last closed down Nissim's place, but only temporarily.
• 2003 - After Nissim reopened his place and again abused horses, Hakol Chai once again pressured the authorities to act, threatening to air new undercover video footage on tv. Finally, the police, together with Hakol Chai, organized a raid on Nissim's place and shut him down permanently. Incredibly, the city still refused to investigate the condition of other horses in the city and remove those who were being abused from their abusers. Hakol Chai determined that regulations would not stop the abuse and called for a complete ban. Hakol Chai's footage of abused donkeys pulling heavy loads aired on a popular TV program.
• April 2005 - Hakol Chai's attorney wrote to the Ministry of Transportation and Mayors of cities around Israel, urging them to ban the practice of horses pulling heavy carts. Hakol Chai pressured the City Council to address the issue and Hakol Chai's attorney submitted a detailed proposal and recommendations to the Council. In response to Hakol Chai's campaign, which cart horse owners said threatened their livelihood, they began heavily lobbying the Mayor's office. The Mayor delayed taking action, saying he does not want to alienate this special interest group.
• Hakol Chai and CHAI organized an international letter-writing campaign, asking that appeals be sent to the Chairperson of the Education, Culture, and Sports Committee in the Knesset, the Minister of Education, Culture, and Sports, the Minister of Transportation, and the Mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa asking them to ban the use of horse-drawn carts to haul heavy loads through busy city streets. Two more years of pressure follow.

Says CHAI's Director, Nina Natelson "We are pleased that, at long last, there will no longer be sights of thin, injured, beaten cart horses in Tel Aviv, and we will continue pressing Mayors of other cities in Israel to issue similar bans."

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"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead.