This is long shot plea...
Presently, we have 3 donkeys who became chonic pain sufferers. It is heart breaking to see them under pain and discomfort and bute has been their sole life line in the past few weeks.
Rosa is very, very old and she has arthritis on her knee caps and her legs are getting arched and crooked.
Pardal, despite not being very old and being a big, strong, hansome donkey, has his front hooves vertical, walking tiptoes all the time, as his pastern joint don't articulate at all. When we rescued him, we thought that under good barefoot trimming, he'd improve. But I was over optimistic.
After 18 months, he's suddenly becoming worse, showing locomotion difficulty.
Our vet reckons that he would have had stress induced laminitis at some point iun his life and that probably some of the bones had fused.
Flôr was made to stand in overgrown hooves for too long. Her leg ligaments gave in for being in so much strain for so long.
PTS may become an option, most certainly decided with the vet's avail, but not for now. Until then, we are trying to keep them as stable as possible, providing we are able to give them quality of life and a minimum level of comfort.
Our vet, who has been at the Devon Donkey Sanctuary in training before, says that many oldies can live happily in bute.
Having thought about this, we are not emotionally prepared to PTS these three donkeys, as they feel part of our family AND they seem happy and still independant when under their painkillers.
And this is my appeal.
In Portugal we have Danilon but there is no Bute. Our vets ships us the bute powder pouches from Spain and it's expensive to keep these 3 on butein such regular basis.
So, our appeal is, in case any of you have spare or even out of date bute that we could have, we would be very grateful to have it.
Same applies to dewormers. We'll be happy to take any surplus.
Many, Many Thanks,
