Tina
Date of Birth: 01/07/2008
Gender: Female
Gotcha Day: Early 2016
Breed: Shetland Pony
Ariane’s daughter Nastassia was volunteering at an animal sanctuary where they wanted to save horses so the founder sent Nastassia to a horse dealer who was going to bring all his ponies to the slaughterhouse. The instructions were to choose 12 ponies to save. Nastassia called her sister Larissa to help her out. They arrived at a small house with a muddy paddock where 30 to 40 dark brown ponies were standing pretty motionless. Choosing the ponies happened randomly, how do you even choose who gets to live and who will die? It’s a truly terrible thing to ask of someone.
Ariane’s daughters tried to spend the least amount of time there in order not to get too attached. The choice was made fairly quickly and the 12 ponies were selected. They were brought to Nastassia’s home. We quickly found out that they were all very ill. Everyone of them had strangles (an upper respiratory tract infection). These ponies were going to be slaughtered and turned into horse meat for human consumption. A testament to the quality of meat… The ponies received treatments for weeks on end and once they got better most of them were adopted via the animal sanctuary.
Tina was used to lure Spirit into a horse box and calm him down after he broke his stitches open and needed to go to the vet. Since that traumatic experience Spirit has been inseparable from Tina and therefore we didn’t have the heart to have Tina adopted without him. Nastassia asked her mother if she wanted to adopt her, along with Bison and Spirit and since Ariane has quite a hard time saying no to hosting an animal, that’s how they ended up at Mudita sanctuary.
To this day there remains a special bond between Tina and Spirit. They are always together and with Bison they form the Three Muditateers!