War Horse Rescue
Scheduled to be released the day after Christmas is the highly anticipated movie, War Horse. And with what I am told is quite the tear jerker, comes new appreciation for millions of horses, donkeys and mules that have served courageously in times of conflict. Welcome to Open Range, I’m Susan Allen inviting you to stay tuned for the story. Today it’s hard to imagine that nearly two million horses were shipped to Europe from a host of countries during WWI including American mustangs and cow ponies. Or that only a mere 62,000 returned to England. In reflecting on this tragedy I can’t decide which is the crueler fate for the thousands of horses deployed on the front lines from England, Australia or America; killed during battle , or a life time of hard labor in Egypt after survivng conflict. It took an English woman named Dorothy Brooke to bring the plight of ex war horses to the masses. In 1930 Ms. Brooke and her brigadier husband went looking for war horses and found many working as beasts of burden on the streets of Cairo as this heart breaking photo of Old Bill at depicts . Dorothy wrote about the travesty in English newspapers and people throughout the UK were moved and raised funds that helped 5000 horses and Dorothy begin what hasnow become the Brooke Institute, a global organization dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules. For horse lovers this is a group reputable and worthy of donations. More than a million equines in third world countries were helped by the Brooke this year alone. And if you watch the film War Horse, you now have your own hidden happy ending, knwong millions of equines lives improved because one woman cared about war horses.
