The night of 4th to 5th July, someone stealthily entered the Horse Rescue animal shelter in Arico (Tenerife) and took five sheep. At least, that is what the founders suspect, having reported on their social media that the sheep have “disappeared” without a trace.
They explained that the individuals who stole them “had everything very well planned”, as the extraction occurred on a very windy night while the animals were in a locked enclosure where they sleep. The shelter suspects someone who had previously visited the place and might have known beforehand where the sheep were kept at night.
Concerned about the animals’ wellbeing, Horse Rescue has offered a substantial reward: £1,000 for anyone who brings the sheep back. They are worried that they may have been kidnapped “for a sacred sacrifice” or to be eaten. “They are old, neutered, and are of no use,” they claim anxiously.
However, for the managers of the shelter, they are not just any sheep. Horse Rescue acts as a sanctuary that rescues abandoned or exploited animals. They have horses, mares, pigs, colonies of cats, goats, birds… and, of course, sheep.
The shelter also operates as a farm school where volunteers from all over the world come to work for periods, paying for their accommodation and contributing to the development of the shelter altruistically. All sorts of work is undertaken because the project’s aim is to be self-sustainable: electricity is generated with solar panels, washing machines operate with a pedalling system, water is heated by passing pipes through a compost heap to utilise the heat produced by chemical processes, and all structures are built or reused by a team of builders and carpenters working in a large open-air workshop.
In summary, Horse Rescue is something very much like a self-sustainable commune focused on volunteerism and the care of rescued animals. This is why the theft of the sheep has hit them like a bolt from the blue, and the owners, Edoardo and Emma, have put forward this £1,000 reward.
