A recent report from Karuna’s President, Clementien: Recently we received a donkey. The donkey owners supply wood to the small local hotels who cannot afford gas cylinders. The wounds you see are caused by carrying loads of wood out of the forest. This heavy load is constantly moving on the same place on the back. For many years I have tried to find some kind of “saddle” to prevent this but without success.

This donkey can never go back to work. We have taken it in and with such wounds the owner loses ownership because of cruelty.

The good news is that compared to 15 years ago the awareness of suffering animals has greatly improved. In the past when I wanted to pick-up a donkey, I didn’t receive any help, people were laughing at me and I was crying as I was struggling to get the donkey in a rickshaw. Sometimes donkeys were dying on the side of the road without any help, food or water.

Now several people, independent of each other, were calling in and organising the pick-up in a rickshaw together with our dedicated helper, Roshni.