The devastating loss of our beloved Zachariah 🙏🏼😓

Amid the devastation and war that is besieging our region as Israel struggles to fight on multiple fronts for its survival, the daily situation is stressful to say the least.

And we woke up on 15th June to find that on top of everything, we had another great tragedy to try to come to terms with - the passing of our dearly beloved, precious boy Zachariah, due to acute kidney failure.

During the harrowing past few nights and days of rocket and missile barrages from Iran and Yemen, we had been desperately trying to help our darling Zachariah to gain strength and recover after he had suddenly collapsed and stayed down. Despite staying down, his appetite was very good and he seemed to be responding to the treatment and medicines that our vet had told us to administer. The advice was not to add any stress by trying to make him get up, first let him regain the strength he needs and start to recover and then see about helping him up. In the meantime of course we made him as comfortable as we possibly could, ensured he drank water and kept up the medicines. His initial blood test from when we recently first noticed he seemed to be losing a little bit of weight, had not shown anything significant except a slight iron deficiency which we took care of. However the latest test result from blood taken on Saturday showed us that he had severely impaired kidney function which inevitably led to his kidney failure. The vet had warned that we may need to look at euthanasia if he wouldn’t respond to the treatment but he had seemed to be improving…

We feel bereft and in shock to have lost this dear, majestic soul who had endured such indescribable suffering.

When we first rescued Zach in 2017, from the northern Syrian border in Israel, we knew nothing about where he had actually originated from or who could have done what they had, to him. For all we knew he could have somehow made his way across the border into Israel from Syria. All we knew was that his eyes had been gauged out and that he had scars on both sides of his face from what looked like knife wounds. We couldn’t even begin to imagine the level of his suffering and how he must have felt. One moment you can see all the world around you and then the next...you fall into the wrong, evil hands and that's it. You are left without eyes, no longer able to make sense of anything, just left in an isolated, painful, lost, fearful world where nobody can ever be trusted. It took years of perseverance and profound love to reassure and encourage him to understand that he could trust us and he made very great progress given his tragic circumstances.

May God bless his precious soul, we feel his loss deeply and can’t quite comprehend it. He had always been such a fine, robust, healthy donkey and it truly is unbearable to now have to see his little empty stable.

Thank you to our supporters and donors for having made it possible for us to have been here for the past 8 years of Zachariah’s life. Thank you that, with your support, we were able to have had the honour of taking care of him.

Please consider making a donation today to ensure our sanctuary can keep being here for all our other precious rescued animals - our 48 donkeys, 2 horses, 2 dogs and many, many little cats. No donation is too small, any amount is truly appreciated.

Without your crucial help, we could not have been here for Zachariah and we would not be able to do any of our work. THANK YOU SO MUCH 🙏🏼

Beautiful Zachariah

Comforted by little gingy Georgie

Zachariah and his angel cushion

Zachariah in his last days

With Adi after having an antibiotic injection

The beautiful, robust figure that he was

Soon after we’d first rescued him