Welcome home, Puyol!

Our work here at El Refugio del Burrito is not only collecting donkeys, but researching new cases and offering our help. Last month we heard news of a donkey that had attacked 2 people whilst he was loose on a road called ‘Carretera de Santa Catalina’ in Murcia, he had bitten a woman on the face and arm and then later had attacked a man whilst he was trying to capture him. The donkey was eventually captured and then taken to the local pound where he had to stay until the owner was found.

The donkey had no microchip and no form of identification and so the owner of the donkey was never found. We contacted the town hall and local pound explaining of our work and that if they needed somewhere to home the donkey that we would take care of him.
The vet that works at the local pound contacted us on the 6th of July asking us to collect the donkey as soon as possible. At this moment in time, we have a huge amount of donkeys at our Fuente de Piedra Farm (89 to be exact) and a few difficult donkeys that have behaviour problems so it was very difficult to find a place for him to stay as he is a stallion, so cannot be with other donkeys. However, we needed to find him somewhere as we always try to help every donkey that needs a ‘helping hoof’!

Our welfare officer went around the towns nearby trying to find a livery stable that would be kind enough to take the new donkey in for a couple of weeks. We were very fortunate in finding a recently opened livery yard situated in Mollina called ‘Cortijo Uribe’ who have taken the donkey in for two weeks until the new foals that we have are big enough to move out of one of our quarantine stables at El Refugio, which is where the new donkey will go.
Our welfare officer and driver prepared to collect the donkey the next day so that they were able to collect the donkey on the 8th of July; it was going to be a long trip, to Murcia and back is about 11hours in total so they decided to leave at 3:30am so that the donkey would not have to travel back in the strong heat. This is a normal practice we carry out during simmer months to avoid donkeys any further suffering. What they didn’t remember was that Spain played against Germany in the semi-finals the night before the collection, and although they were extremely happy that Spain went through into the finals, thanks to Puyol and his goal, they hardly got any sleep!

The collection of the donkey went well, and although he was known to be a bit of a handful he loaded well and there were no problems during the journey, he was calm and travelled well. Our welfare officer made sure he had a drink every hour and sponged him down with cool water so that he didn’t get too hot, it got to over 40 degrees later on that day!
He arrived at ‘Cortijo Uribe’ and unloaded without a problem, he had a good sing to the other horses that are there but they seem to just look at him as if to say ‘you’re a weird looking horse!’ He has however made friends with a spanish mastiff (who is about as big as him!) who sits by his stable all day and night as if to protect him or keep him company.
As the donkey was abandoned, he had no name, so we were thinking of a name for him, we had names in mind but the best one had to be ‘PUYOL’. As thanks to the real Carlos Puyol, Spain got through to the finals of the world cup thanks to a fantastic header resulting in a goal, for that reason (and the fact that our driver and welfare officer never slept!) our new donkey is called ‘Puyol’. We sincerely hope that Carlos Puyol doesn’t mind. We don’t think he will as he is also an animal lover and is very much of an animal rights activist himself.

Our ‘Puyol’ however should be coming home to El Refugio in about a week’s time where he will spend 6 weeks before he is introduced to new donkey friends.

We would like to say a huge “thanks!” to the people at ‘Cortijo Uribe’ for all of their help!