A Brief Newsround - Week Ending 16/05/21

One of the Lucy Irvine Foundation Europe's most valued and versatile helpers is Roma. With us for nearly 6 years now, he's learned how dogs and horses can be handled differently - with more sensitivity to their needs - than is customary in the community he comes from. His new knowledge is starting to spread among others making Ilia,  in effect , an ambassador for LIFE in several Roma communities so that more dogs and horses are experiencing more thoughtful handling. 

As Ilia learns, others learn from him. This past week he acquired a new useful skill to pass on: how to file a horse's hooves between trims carried out by an expert. LIFE wants to thank trimmer Vanya Lavarova, who's also a qualified vet and a successful competition rider, for helping Ilia to learn how to file hooves.

Vanya Lavarova demonstrating how to file hooves

Supervising & Guiding Ilia

Ilia learning to file his filly's hooves

With Ilia, who helps translate my Bulgarian into Romanes when we're with Roma who's Bulgarian is limited, I visited a number of puppies during the week, some of which were held in uncomfortable ways by their young owners.

 Ilia showed them how and why a puppy needs his whole body supported when he is held. A puppy is not a toy to be carelessly dangled. In a photo here you can see him teaching his little son.

This photo speaks volumes. The future generations learning kinder ways

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One of LIFE's rescued and rehabilitated horses, Boshko, suffered from a large sarcoid, a growth, under his belly last year. An equine specialist vet, Dr Elitsa Bachvarova-Popova, recommended a treatment to be fed to him twice daily, the main active ingredient being turmeric. Fads for superfoods and miracle natural meds tend to come and go but hailing from India, turmeric as a cure for a multitude of ills has been around a very long time. I was more than ready to give it a try. In animal rescue we're not supposed to have favourites but we're human and I'll admit Boshko is one of mine. The results, after two months of consistently feeding the yellow mix to Boshko were remarkable. His ugly sarcoid ceased to grow, dried up and one day simply fell off.

Boshko by the yellow roofed cat wagon

So, when we were shown this pretty mare with sarcoids at a meeting we held with local horse owners, we decided to try the turmeric recipe which cured Boshko on her. We have to trust her young owner to feed her the mix regularly, morning and evening and we think he will because he showed real interest when I made a sample for him when we met and fed it to her on the spot. As a horse's first taste of turmeric can be startling we added a little brown sugar to make it tasty. She licked up every scrap!

Coconut oil, turmeric, black pepper, apple and brown sugar.

More please!

   

In doggy news, a big decision by his sponsors, with input from myself, was made about dear old Lucky this past week. Lucky was rescued several summers ago after living for nine years alone on a chain. His owner threw bread at him, sometimes 3 loaves at a time so he'd last a while when she didn't visit her country property for a week. He was meant to be a guard there. He lived surrounded by his own faeces with a dirty metal cauldron for water. LIFE persuaded the owner to let us take him when it was clear he was becoming deaf and wouldn't last long if left as he was. He's enjoyed freedom from a chain for 3 years with us now and the company of other canines. Then last Autumn we noticed a lump on his side, which turned out to be cancerous. Lucky's wonderful sponsors, a group of kind ladies in Finland, not only funded an operation to remove the tumour but covered the costs of dew claw removal and coat and nail clipping. He's also been supplied with joint and heartworm treatments and quality food by them consistently. In that sense, he's been a very lucky old boy. But now that the cancer has come back it's been decided not to put him through any more surgery. Lucky will be kept pain free and will stay on at LIFE with a companion dog, until the time is right to let him go peacefully via euthanasia. 

Lucky & I

The week ended with a heart-in-mouth search in a cemetery close to one of the vets LIFE attends in town. A dear old grandpa from my village asked for help to get his two female dogs, a mother and daughter, spayed. But he didn't mention quite how hard to handle they were, by anyone other than himself, and the mother went awol outside the vet clinic. The only way we could think of to get her back to safety was to take grandpa into town and have him call her, walking with her daughter in the direction she was last seen. After an extensive tour of a cemetery the missing mother dog finally came to him and immensely relieved, we took the trio home. There's never a dull moment in life at LIFE!  

You can see daily updates on what's happening with the cats, dogs and horses at my place by connecting with me on Facebook.  If you're thinking about rehoming one of our rescued dogs, you can find information via the link about the dogs available for adoption, and we'd be so very grateful if you'd consider making a donation to LIFE's work.


Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead,


Lucy