In August 10, 2024, after the request of Arcadia Animal Care, our vet and Equine Care Programme Coordinator Elisa Geskou and equine dental technician Alkis Gkeskos, visited Paralion Astros to provide veterinary and dental care to the shelter’s equines. Our farrier Vaios Bakratsas had provided farriery service a few weeks ago on the 25th of July.
The team treated all 14 residents of the shelter, apart from a mare and her foal that had been rescued by the group, but have always been difficult to be caught. Although we totally understand the lack of time that these volunteers have as they take care of a very big number of dogs too, our team explained to them the importance of handling the equines and showed them ways on how they should work towards catching and handling them.
Most of the equines were found in a relatively good body condition score, apart from several horses and an elderly donkey. Our vet diagnosed from the history and examinations why each of these animals had lost so much weight. Dental checks and treatments were made and advice was given to feed separately from the rest, feed extra soft food and add supplements to help them gain weight.
No ectoparasites at all existed in the premises, even not stable flies, something that surprised us positively. One of the horses however suffers from sweet itch, an allergy caused by the midge bites, which is very annoying for the horse during the summer. The volunteers use antiparasites regularly and take care of the itchiness wounds, so the horse’s skin stays in a relatively good condition. However he is obese and instructions were given to lose weight.
All equines that had sharp edges, hooks and ramps received dental treatments. The dental treatment is very important for the underweight horses and we will see the difference in a few months. Markos, one “wild” donkey that likes to run away and kick, was caught after a lot of efforts and although he continued to behave naughty and turning his back legs to kick, he seemed to enjoy Alkis’ dental treatment.
Elisa showed to the volunteers how to groom and pick up the legs of the “difficult” equines, as this will help the latter trust their carers and be handled more easily. She measured the heart girth and height of the animals, in order to estimate their weight, therefore guide the volunteers regarding the feeding quantities and the worming pastes. Our outreach was also a grooming day for all the animals; as our team was working, the volunteers found some time to make all animals beautiful with a curry comb, a brush and scissors for the manes!
Vaios had trimmed the hooves of the equines that needed farriery treatment. Many of them had grown and broken, so a good trimming corrected all the problems. Vaios did not forget Willie the goat and trimmed his hooves to walk better.
Machos the donkey passed away recently from old age, but he managed to live happily the last period of his life. Pyrimachos who survived the fires and Poulagris who had been bitten by wolves, continue to live happily in the shelter.
Our team was happy to meet again Giorgos, Petroula and Christos, the volunteers -heroes as we like to call them – from Arcadia Animal Care. Daily they take care of hundreds of animals literally, dogs, horses, donkeys, pigs, goats. They do a great job and they need everyone’s support to continue caring for all of them.
