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Animals in Uniform

The Key to Longeivity

In Army, Horses and Mules are generally retained in service till 18-20 yrs after which they are disposed off. Some, who have exceptionally good health, survive more. But the longest survivors have other qualities which make them indispensible.

There was this pure black horse “Jorawar” whom we retained way past his productive life so that we had a steady supply of black horse shoes which were in great demand for their occult powers. And our clientele used to be overwhelmingly very senior officers!

Then we had “Thumri” a very agreeable chestnut mare who was very quiet and docile on whom we used to demonstrate myriad high  tech equipment like ECG, Ultrasound, Ultrasonic Nebulizers etc to the visiting officers.

One mare, who was a work animal (pulls carts), was a surrogate mother for whole lot of orphan foals in her lifetime. Her milk never dried and at any given time you could see her breast feeding 2-3 of these poor little things. She used to be so agitated if any of her adopted children was amiss. The syces gave her the name “Jagatmata”.

Young horses and foals don’t allow a halter to put on their head. So when they are to be moved from one place to other, a mare is led in the front and they will follow her. Such a mare is called “engine” and you can see 3-4 “bogies” following her to the treatment area for their shots.

Then there was the now famous “Pedongi” who had exceptionally good health and vigour. He always displayed a promise of longeivity. The same promise became his ticket to extended time and he became “the longest serving Army mule “ (Guinness Book of World Records). He died at the ripe age of 39.

“Bholu” a mule in my AT Company was the ultimate thespian. He was our star attraction during trick riding shows in various pagal gymkhana type events. A couple of jokers would enter the arena riding Bholu and do all kind of acrobatics while simultaneously cracking wild jokes on and off the poker faced mule. In the end, Bholu was told that his girlfriend had eloped with a Donkey! At this Bholu would start shaking violently and suddenely drop on the ground. After that no amount of pushing and pulling and noise would raise Bholu. He would then be pronounced dead due to shock. There used to appear four jawans with a stringed khat (cot) then and Bholu was put on cart and ferried away with chants of “Ram Naam Satya Hai”. Once out of sight, Bholu used to leave the khat and reappear with the jokers to a spontaneous applause by spectators.

He lived till 25 when he died in his sleep!