Thanks to the Sanctuary’s Ahmedabad project, I was able to support an entire family through a difficult time.

A lady called Mrs Geetha, who works in the NBC brick kiln in Sanathal, had to take on the burden of caring for her family when her husband, Mr Ramaji, became blind. With four children to care for; three boys, (Mohan, Teja and Peeraji) and one girl (Rekha), the only way of earning a living was to use her four donkeys to carry the newly-made bricks from the kilns. Mohan and Teja helped their mother but, sadly, one of the donkeys became very ill, and was unable to work.

Fortunately our team saw how ill the donkey was, and it was taken into our clinic for treatment. Realising the loss of income would be a tragedy for the family, they were loaned, free of charge, one of our special donkeys, named Bunty. This has enabled the family to keep going, and Bunty, who is always in our care along with other ‘emergency loan’ donkeys, is doing a good job too.

In my daily work, I meet donkeys and mules suffering with malnutrition, lameness, open wounds caused by overloading and even potentially fatal conditions such as colic, where animals have ingested plastic bags, etc.

It’s very important that we help the owners. Very often, it is their lack of knowledge on the care and management of donkeys which causes much of the suffering. We will show them ways of improving harnessing to include more padding; we have developed ‘doughnut rings’ which alleviate pain around an open wound (as the owners will continue to work an animal).

We encourage owners to replace wooden or metal whips with soft, padded ones and we hand out adapted flat head screw drivers which make ideal hoof picks so that they can regularly clean the hooves to prevent lameness.

The clinics are always fully attended, and the little donkeys working there are getting help and attention to make their lives a little easier.