On September 12, 1993 our mare Sugar gave birth to a foal whom we named Beauty. It was a dream come true for me as I`ve always loved horses. We had six delightful months with her, watching all her antics (there was the touch of the clown about her) with her mother.

Unfortunately, due to lack of space we could not keep Beauty. So we found a lovely family in the next village where the husband and wife both cared for her with love and commitment. They were truly devoted to her and in due course she was trained to take her owner for rides on the karettun.

He would bring Beauty past our house every weekend and Beauty and Sugar would exchange greetings.

On April 20 she was being brought as usual down the Zebbug Road to Ghasri at a walking pace, when she got her back leg stuck in a recently made but uncovered borehole and she fell over. There were no warnings of this hazard. She tried to get up and her owner tried to help her by cutting off all the harness to give her a better chance to get free.

In her desperate ensuing struggle to get up she broke her leg. By this time several relatives, including the owner`s wife, had arrived to assist. The vet was called but the situation was useless. Beauty had to be destroyed in the presence of the police, there on the public road.

The people who fought to save her say that they will always be haunted by the sight of the carnage and Beauty`s cries of agony. Even after she had died it still took a long time for several men to finally release her leg from the borehole. This was no accident, it was an act of irresponsible, incompetent neglect to have left the boreholes uncovered.

This could have happened anywhere in Gozo, where holes for festa flagpoles are left uncovered for months. It could have been worse, it could easily have been a child`s foot or a jogger`s. Thank God it was not. It was Beauty. In the words of her owner "she did not deserve to die like that."