A Norval couple have spoken of their pain after a loved family horse was shot dead last Friday.<\/p>\n
Sheryl and Graeme Cox found the animal dead in the front paddock of their property on Better Route Road.<\/p>\n
The horse named Cathy had been shot from close range and appeared to have struggled for several hours before passing away.<\/p>\n
Another horse in the paddock was uninjured.<\/p>\n
Sheryl Cox said it appears the horse was shot sometime between 8pm Good Friday and early Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
\u2018We got up early on Saturday morning and loaded up the ute and put the trailer on to go and get wood and we got down to the gate and we saw her laying there. Graeme went over to check and saw she had been shot,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mr Cox said he remembers hearing a gunshot the night before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard one (gunshot) after eight but I\u2019m not really sure what time. There\u2019s always gunshots and we don\u2019t take much notice of them because there are a lot of spotlighters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ms Cox said the shooting was senseless.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was deliberate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t mistake a horse from seventy yards from the road. It\u2019s a big horse and there\u2019s two of them and there was a full moon. Even a blind man would see it\u2019s a horse,\u201d Mr Cox said.<\/p>\n
Cathy has lived happily on the property for several years and was a prized pet of the Cox\u2019s daughter Natasha.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe bought Cathy for her to ride because she loves horses,\u201d Ms Cox said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to ring her up and I said I\u2019ve got bad news, Cathy is dead and she said you\u2019re kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had been a pacer who had ended her career. We\u2019ve had her 15, 16 years. She was going to die on the place but not like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Cox said Cathy had clearly struggled in the hours after the shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wouldn\u2019t have had a very good death because she was shot in the chest, the bullet went in one side and came out the other side. It\u2019s hit the lung area and probably around the heart. There was just blood everywhere. There\u2019s a circle where she has thrashed around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Cox said it was unsettling that someone was driving around the area at night shooting innocent animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re idiots you know. They just fire at anything and you just wonder is a bullet going to come through a window. They\u2019re stupid enough to shoot a horse, people with nothing better to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Police have commenced an investigation into the shooting and have doorknocked nearby neighbours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been here for 21 years coming up this Christmas and we have great neighbours. This has completely shocked us,\u201d Ms Cox said.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information of the shooting should contact Ararat Police on 5355 1500 or Crimestoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Norval couple have spoken of their pain after a loved family horse was shot dead last Friday.
\nSheryl and Graeme Cox found the animal dead in the front paddock of their property on Better Route Road.
\nThe horse named Cathy had been shot from close range and appeared to have struggled for several hours before passing away.
\nAnother horse in the paddock was uninjured.
\nSheryl Cox said it appears the horse was shot sometime between 8pm Good Friday and early Saturday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/IMG_7441-2-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-eJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}