The woman nursing Spain’s abused horses back to health

“Maybe you can’t change the world by saving one horse, but you can change the whole world for the horse you save.” — Sue Weeding, Easy Horse Care Rescue Centre co-founder.

Sue’s rescue centre is a place that makes you feel things. Total peace as you listen to fat horses much noisily on rich alfalfa hay. Red-hot anger as you contemplate the horrific situations they survived to get here. Joy as you watch the oddball donkey who’s decided he’s a horse take charge of the two biggest and meanest geldings in the whole place, somehow coercing them into grooming him and giving him first dibs on dinner.

There’s 97 horses, ponies and donkeys here now. Many of them are proof that the law is an ass. There’s been precious few cruelty convictions. One guy who starved 14 horses and 11 donkeys got off with a nine-month suspended sentence this year and didn’t have to pay a single cent for the suffering he’d inflicted.

Sue’s the one who picks up the pieces. She nurses her rescued equines back to health, does whatever it takes. She won’t give up on them, no matter how physically battered or mentally broken they are. No matter how much it costs. No matter that the courts legally place these animals in her care, but award her exactly zero euros to help cover their enormous costs.

She’s not giving up on Spain, either, even as this country does precious little to ease her path. Spain’s animal welfare record hovers around “shithouse” but Sue reckons police are slowly coming around and more Spaniards are reporting cruelty. Slowly but surely her work is paying off. “This year will be better,” she tells herself each new year. “This will be the year.”

Sue’s a person who makes you feel things. Like, that maybe the world can change, can become kinder and gentler and fairer — and that maybe it’s worth trying to be a part of that change.