Lauderdale people have rescued an abused horse - and now Borderers are being asked to help pay to keep and feed the mare over the winter.

Horse whisperer Judi Gunn has been treating the big Irish draught horse, so terrified she can't be touched, for the last three months.

But the mare's owner wanted to sell her for meat, which likely would have meant the trauma of the 16.2hh horse being transported live overseas.

And that was a prospect too upsetting to the animal behaviourist with 30 years' experience helping horses and dogs.

Judi said: "I have never in all my years of working with horses seen such an abused horse as this."

She privately put in a prayer request for the animal to her local church and told people of the mare's plight and asked the horse's owner to give her more time.

She added: "I have never put a prayer in a prayer box in my entire life, but I was completely and utterly lost.

"I didn't know what to do because I couldn't imagine that horses's last day.

"She won't load, she wouldn't go into a stable - the sheer trauma for this horse would have been terrible."

Then, last Tuesday, a woman visited without warning to see Judi about the mare and read more about the animal while waiting for Judi to return home.

"Before I had the chance to get out of the car, she told me: 'here is a cheque towards the horse's future'. I broke down," said Judi.

A few minutes later the owner texted to say she was definitely going to sell her for meat because she needed the money.

The next day - with other donations - Judi bought the mare and renamed her Lauder Lass in recognition of the local people who saved her life.

The 10-year-old mare has scar marks round her muzzle, and up her legs, and what looks like a probe mark on her neck, indicating she had likely been given electric shocks.

"If you touch her she jumps two feet in the air," said Judi.

There is also a 3-inch indentation round her neck from some sort of collar, scar marks on her rump, possibly from stallions, and she has had four or five foals.

Judi started working with the mare at the previous owner's home.

"She was petrified, she would rather run away and jump walls than be around humans," she said.
It's taken three months of rehabilitation for Judi Gunn to get so close to Lauder Lass. Photograph: Alastair Watson