This is a well rehearsed story that every time make us face the incomprehensible behaviours and panic caused by a disease that isn’t dangerous for people and almost-not-at-all dangerous for equines.
We keep on telling you our direct experiences regarding the Infectious Equine Anaemia to put in evidence the absurdity of the current (and incomplete) legislation on this matter, which often sentences perfectly healthy horses to death.
Luckily, this hasn’t be Ritsma’s fate: she will continue to live and enjoy the company of other horses.
Her ordeal – and her owner’s, Avv. Linares – began about a month ago, when she was found ositive to the Coggin’s Test.
The riding centre were she was stabled near Naples was immediately put under sequestration (and thus will remain for three more months after Ritsma left the place): no horse could arrive or leave the estate, and the mare had to be put in isolation, as a decision was made about her fate.
Thus Avv. Linares had to unwilling close Ritsma in the sort of unsettling dark cage you can see in the photos...hadn’t the situation been to dramatic, it could have stirred some laughs. As it was, the mare had to spent three weeks in this unnatural condition, all with the ASL (local health authorities) approval—the same authorities which should instead guarantee the animals’ wellbeing.
As Avv. Linares looked for a solution to this nightmare, the people around him began to pressure him to make him choose the easiest and more “advantageous” way out for everyone: put down Ritsma so that the ASL would lift the ban from the riding centre. It goes without saying that both owner and mare were pointed to as if they were plague-spreaders.
After several, unanswered, requests of help sent to various people, Avv, Linares called us with his dramatic tale, asking us to help him to let Ritsma live.
As it happened with Solanos, we took action at once, determinate to save her but well aware we would have to face a difficult, bureaucratic path.
In the end, we did it…this time with the help of Ercole Gobbo, a private citizen who has listened to our request for help months ago, and gave his availability to keep Ritsma at pension on his estate. For the past two years Ercole has been housing King and Zampa, two other, perfectly healthy IEA positive horses, with whom Ritsma has already bonded.
We did the rest, with a frantic activity of phone calls and emails that led to the transfer authorization by the ASL of Frosinone.
Satisfied with this result, we continue our commitment for a change of the current legislation, in order to avoid more unjustified killings of equines. Among the other things, we are still waiting for an answer from the Health Minister, to which, time ago, we offered the possibility to use our centre as an observatory for researches on the IEA, since we have been hosting a semi-wild herd of IEA positive horses for years.

  The "cage" where Ritsma has been closed three weeks





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  Ritsma, after being moved, free together with her new friends King and Zampa: al of them are positive to EIA, but perfectly healthy