In October 2007, I arrived in France. I didn't know it at the time but this is a very very dangerous time to be in France if you are an equine, or even a donk.
This is the time that all the lazy people who don't want to pay for their horses over winter, having used them all summer, throw them away. Riding schools, tourist attractions, carriage horses from the major tourist cities, petting zoos, petting farms, anywhere a horse can be useful, and has done a summer's work, well this is the thanks they get.
They get sent for slaughter. There are big markets, where thousands of horses ponies and donkeys are penned up, and the butcher comes round and buys them.
Being an innocent donkey, I had no idea that the timing of my arrival in France could be so tragic. Mum says she has now seen some pictures of these fairs, and it breaks here heart to think of me there, all alone, or with my mum, or maybe with my old mate Cazaux. Bless his little cotton socks.
Like me, he was lucky. We didn't go to the butchers fairs, but we did have a pretty miserable winter, out in the fields, fighting for food, we got cold and thin, we got lice, we got long feet. But we didn't die. So we were lucky.
I cannot stop crying when I see all these poor creatures just waiting to go on the death lorries. I know that they haven't been saved, as the ones in these pictures are now dead. A few might have been bought by kind people who wanted to save them, but there just aren't enough of these people around.
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