By Jesse Graham
A HEALESVILLE woman is urging horse owners to be wary, after a man was caught cutting hair off of her horse’s tail on Monday night.
At about 8.10pm on Monday, 9 January, a group of people came across a man cutting hair off of a horse’s tail with scissors in a Healesville paddock and confronted him.
The horse’s owner, Kersten Gentle, said the group were related to the paddock owners and told the man “in no uncertain terms” to leave the animal alone.
He allegedly told the group that he wanted the hair to make a ‘spiritual amulet’, and had cut off a third of the horse’s tail by the time he was confronted.
Ms Gentle said that, while cutting hair off a horse’s tail was not painful for the animal, the tails helped to prevent fly infestations, and losing the tail could impact the animal’s health.
“There’s quite a large value, of the horses who are in the paddock – what would he be doing if the horse kicked him? What if he stabbed it?” she said.
“It’s actual cruelty to animals – horses need their tails, they have tails for a reason.
“We were very distressed all night, and worried, and the owners of the paddock are worried that future damage might happen.”
Ms Gentle said horses with cut tails often had to have fake ones attached while the hair re-grew, both for keeping flies away and if they were being shown in events.
After posting information and photos from the incident onto the Healesville Noticeboard Facebook page, Ms Gentle said others had commented about similar incidents happening to their horses.
She said many of the commenters offered their support or concern for the incident on the page.
“It was just beautiful, that there was so much outpouring from the community, and concern, and too often society sits back and says they don’t want to be involved in things,” Ms Gentle said.
“It was really good seeing people sitting up and saying ‘I want to be involved’ … it shows what a beautiful town we’ve got.
Ms Gentle said she had reported the matter to the RSPCA and Healesville Police, along with the details of two others who said they also had their horses’ tails cut.
A Healesville police officer said they were liaising with an RSPCA inspector about the incident.
