Once upon a time, dozens of children took turns at Kaudela during the summer. Others visited horses regularly and learned to care for and ride them. Not so anymore. A lone riding helmet, the odd shoe or a charred halter now lies on the scorched floor where stables once stood.
“Here was a mango tree. She would have had a foal by now,” says the 70-year-old trainer and riding school owner sadly as he walks past the crematorium. The outlines of the boxes are still visible on the floor. Laura was pregnant at the entrance to one of them.
Opposite was a horse called Wavelight Laser, which they called Vilik. A little further on, there was the children’s riding gear. “The bridles, the helmets, the saddles… all these cost tens of thousands of crowns,” Gautela explains. Nearby, two stallions were stabled, Venur de Ling II., a friend of Venur de Ling, also known as Venushek.
“The kids loved them. We couldn’t tell, we had been preparing them for almost three weeks. There was nothing here,” he says. That is why he wants to restore and establish his riding school CollectionPeople can contribute.
“I found out in five minutes at half past one in the afternoon,” he recalls. His son was taking care of the horse in the morning and then he left to do something at the post office. He left at 12:30 p.m., apparently nowhere to return.
“In one minute to five minutes, my neighbor called me that there was a fire here. I thought maybe there was something in the container or last time – like tires. But when I left the house and saw the smoke, it was clear that it was bad,” says the seventy-year-old. old man.
On arriving at the scene, firemen did not let him into the stable. “It was terrible, but absolutely terrible heat,” he says. The stables had an iron structure, but they were wooden. Additionally, Gautela stored hay near them. Arson is no small problem for arsonists.
The reason? He didn’t have it, he was an arsonist
A neighbor in the next property later showed Kodal CCTV footage which clearly showed the arsonist, who was later identified by police. He already owned the place – two weeks ago he set fire to a pile of tires at his neighbor’s house. The twenty-nine-year-old man now faces six years in prison.
“Why did he do it? There’s no reason. He’s just mentally ill,” Gautela explains without a trace of anger. Resignation was the only note in his voice as he looked towards the open space where only black ash lay from the landscape a short distance from the enclosure.
“Unfortunately, we don’t insure it because it’s a flood zone here, so nobody wants to insure it for you,” he shrugs sadly. But what’s worse for him is that eight of his beloved horses are gone.
I hope they suffocated first
“It was a terrible mental burden. I just stood there and didn’t pay attention. It took about two hours…” he describes the horror he experienced. “I thought I should call an ambulance.”
He had to take anti-depressants for a fortnight after that, and the sadness still haunts him today. “What must those horses have tried? I hope they choked on the smoke…” he shakes his head.
He lost about four million crowns in the fire. And he had to pay extra to remove the incinerator. “The horses had to be taken to the processing plant. They had to load them with a backhoe, they couldn’t lift them any other way,” he says, passing what’s left of the barn.
“We want to rebuild the riding school gradually. Let’s see how much we collect and how it works,” he adds.
A new fence is already in place. Two horses are grazing in it. Gautela got a brown mare and a white stallion from acquaintances. The place is not so sad.
