The Brooke -

Brick kiln donkey Mithu carried three tonnes of unbaked bricks each day up a steep bank to the Basti Labar brick kiln in Multan, Pakistan. But one day the little donkey could take the load no longer and collapsed from exhaustion...

He would make 20 to 25 trips, each time struggling in sweltering heat with 90kg of bricks. And he would do it virtually non-stop in hellish eight to ten hour shifts with barely any food, water or rest.

Terrible overloading was the result of his owner Mohammad Nazir’s poverty. He was only paid a penny for every 10 bricks transported, so his only thought was feeding and clothing his wife and three children, and soaring inflation meant he could never earn enough. So he upped Mithu’s loads to 120kg, about 19 stone. Mithu tried so very hard to carry them, but finally, one day his legs gave way.

Mohammad pulled the bricks off him and contacted the nearby Brooke mobile team. They spent two and a half hours treating the poor donkey for dehydration, wounds and exhaustion, and also advised Mohammad on his animal management.

In several one-to-one sessions, Brooke vet Dr Rab Nawaz shared animal welfare skills with him, including proper feeding, resting and watering, as well as the dangers of overloading. He also gave him first aid training to enable him to tend any future wounds.

It took Mithu a month to recover…but his owner was a changed man. Mohammad now gives him plenty of water and rest breaks and feeds him better too. ‘I will never again overload him’ he says, ‘because, as the Brooke showed me, it won’t increase my income or Mithu’s health or productivity.’

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Lightening the loads of working animals - Mithu's story