We Remember ....

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them".


Today we remembered the Fallen at our village war memorial. Our Act of Remembrance was particularly poignant this year because of Remembrance Sunday falling on the 11th November.

We had joined in the village service but had stayed on, as a Bears Unlimited group, to remember the casualties who tend to get forgotten, namely the horses who died on active service. Being an eclectic collection of bears, dogs, sheep, monkeys and so on, we love animals of every kind and find the loss of all those courageous horses really tragic.

Our concern for these, largely forgotten, casualties of war, has led us to adopt the Brooke equine charity as one of our corporate charities. This charity was founded by a lady called Dorothy Brooke after she came across hundreds of emaciated horses being used as beasts of burden on the streets of Cairo in 1930. When she discovered they were ex-cavalry horses of the British, Australian and American forces and had all seen service in the First World War before being sold into a life of hard labour in Cairo when the conflict ended in 1918, she was so moved by their plight that she founded the Brooke Charity to buy these animals their freedom.

Today the Brooke helps horses and donkeys all over the world and is an international equine lifesaver. The charity works in Egypt, India, Pakistan, Jordan, Israel (Palestinian villages in Israel and the West Bank), Afghanistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Guatemala, relieving suffering, and probably most importantly, educating the owners of these animals, who genuinely don't believe their animals feel pain or need water and shade. It breaks our hearts to think of donkeys collapsing under enormous loads in the heat, desperate for a drink and then being hit with a stick instead of being the care and the water they desperately need. And so, we raise money to support the work of the Brooke and we hope our readers will check out their website and consider doing the same.


So, back to where we started, we remember ... lest we forget.

Lots of love, all at Bears Unlimited xxx