Just returned from a wonderful ten days in Canada - ostensibly to see family, but how can you go to Canada without getting stuck into the wonders of nature ?

So we spent lots of time in the woods, looking for bears, wolves, moose and all the other wonderful creatures of the northern latitudes - especially exciting for someone who likes to paint or draw them.
It's not only the big, sexy numbers that give pleasure - for us, watching dragonflies flitting over the lily-covered beaver ponds in Algonquin in the early morning sunshine is just as magical.
It also gives a little time for thought.

On Monday we are off to visit our project in Ethiopia - working with the cart-horses that toil in the the towns and cities of that fascinating country. It's hard not to make comparisons between their lives and the lives of the many sport and leisure horses we saw around Canada.

In most cases it's hard to believe they are the same species.

In Ethiopia, you hardly see a horse over 14.2 hands - many of them are a lot smaller. Yet they work a life of unremitting toil - pulling carts or 'taxis' for their impoverished owners. This is normally the only source of family income.

The harness they wear is usually home-made, and even then it's probably been through several lifetimes - repaired with bits of wire, nuts and bolts, or even nails. And talking about nails - they use normal woodworking nails to hold on the homemade 'shoes' that are worn - often with a bit of rubber tyre sandwiched between sole and metal - supposedly to give a better grip. With bad conformation to start with, and then overworked and poorly fed when still too young, joint deformities are commonplace. Frequently horses are still working having suffered fractures in the lower limb or fetlock.Almost every animal is lame.

It is breathtakingly sad.

And then they have to cope with the diseases - things that have almost disappeared in vaccinated western horses.

Tetanus is commonplace, fistulous withers and septic wounds in most elderly horses (if they make it that long), even rabies is not uncommon. Another rampant disease, spread by flies onto open wounds, is epizootic lymphangitis - suppurating boils and abscesses eventually over the whole body and leading to a long and lingering death. And what a death. The owners have no access to euthanasia drugs or even firearms - so most animals that are no longer capable of working are simply abandoned - to suffer a slow and painful end. If they're lucky, the hyenas take them.

So you can imagine SPANA has its work cut out to deal with all that.

The horses of North America should thank their lucky stars !