23/08/2021

We accepted her at the request of the University of Perugia. She comes from the ‘seizure of Lunghezza’, she  has a dramatic history behind her

Her name is Gin Tonic, she is a three-year-old filly and risks losing the only eye she has left. For this reason, the University of Perugia has asked IHP to host and treat her at its recovery centre in Tuscany. Gin Tonic has a dramatic history behind her: she comes from the so-called ‘seizure of Lunghezza’, a concentration camp in the homonymous district of Rome that IHP, Legambiente and Progetto Islander managed to seize in 2018 after five years of battles. From there also comes Grifo - the foal blind from birth, IHP's ‘mascot’ who has been taking care of him for three years - and his mother Azzurra.

Gin Tonic arrived on Saturday afternoon at the IHP centre: “We accepted an explicit request from the University of Perugia who was treating her” - explains the President of IHP, Sonny Richichi.   Gin Tonic was already blind in one eye from an old trauma and in recent days she had shown to have a stromal abscess in the other eye, possibly derived from a foreign body.

At the veterinary hospital in Perugia, an intervention was carried out and therapy was set up to try to save her eye.

The therapy is long and delicate and for this reason the Director of the clinic asked IHP to host her and perform the treatments at its facilities. We have the skills to do so and we can thus avoid the hospital costs that would be very expensive in a veterinary clinic. Gin Tonic, in fact, does not have an owner. After the seizure of Lunghezza  she was entrusted in judicial seizure to the associations that at the time fought to close the lager where a pseudo breeder kept horses, ponies, donkeys and mules in conditions of severe mistreatment. Those who died of starvation were thrown into a small stream, a tributary of the Aniene river: a horror in the heart of the city, in the Municipality of Rome, in the district of Lunghezza. “We are saving Gin Tonic for the second time and we ask our friends and supporters to help us to pay for the medical and treatment bills of this unfortunate horse”, concludes Richichi.

Related articles and videos:

Tens of horses abused in Rome: video 2013

Tens of horses abused in Rome: video 2018

The story of Grifo (VIDEO 1)

The story of Grifo (VIDEO 2)