Sometimes on my blog I have been dealing with the things or places in Poland with names taken after Ireland, or more or less related to Ireland. This time it will be something special. As some of you know, I have a new job for an Irish IT company who is working on new big service for people who care and for the non-profit organisations and charities. One of the first Polish non-profit charities I have contacted with was the one of the biggest in Europe pounds for horses - “Tara”. The name is rather taken after the story “Gone with the wind”, however it is related to the Tara hill. Irish Tara was the residence of the high king of Ireland, and Polish Tara is a kingdom of horses, usually the old, disabled and bad experienced ones. Horses are usually being bought straight from the slaughter houses, sometimes they are bought from the lorries that are going to Italy. Poland is a land of horses as Ireland, unfortunately many of our horses are breed in bad conditions and then sold to Italy and France for meat. They have to spend the journey in terrible conditions, crowded over limits in the lorries, without water, air and food. Luckily we have people who are devoting all of their time to save those horses from the death in one of the Italian, French or Polish slaughter houses, to save them from the cruelty, starvation etc. (More info on their website: www.ligon.chorzow.pl/tara)
In Tara there is over 100 horses placed in the old German grange that used to be a communistic state property farm (like Soviet kolhoz). They have plenty of land, meadows for horses and lots of buildings for stables, but the grange was partly destroyed by the former owner - the company who did nothing to renovate it.
The Pound is maintained by 2 people - married couple - Scarlet (that is her real name) and Peter with help of over 1000 volunteers. The horses are neither for sale nor for ride. They are retired, spending rest of their lives in peace. Horses in Tara reach the age over 30.
Here is some photos I took during the visit in Polish Tara:
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