Farm Life 103 – When That Time Comes

None of us live forever. Not people, not dogs or cats or pet rabbits, and certainly not horses either. When you get dogs or cats as pets, it’s sort of like a marriage – it’s until “death do us part”, and very, very likely death will come to the pet before it comes to you. A discussion of how you’ll deal with the death of small animals should be a part of the decision to get a pet.

Dealing with the death of a beloved pet is a part of growing up for young people (though it gets no easier when we are old people). In a way it is practice for the heartache of losing people you love as you go through life. It is always hard emotionally.

Horses are a little different than cats & dogs. For one thing, a fair number of horse lovers are fortunate enough to go through many years without experiencing the death of one of their horses. Part of that is because horses tend to live a long life – often 25 years old, and not uncommonly living to 30 or more. Another factor is the fact that riders often will move through their riding career advancing from one horse to another as your skills improve. Many riders move up to a more challenging or talented horse every three or four years, selling their old horse to a younger rider. With luck, you’ll always have a horse in the prime of its life if you keep changing horses this way. You may never have to deal with end of life issues for your horse.

But others commit to a horse for life. I know many people who will never part with a horse they love until “death do us part”. And if you have a lot of horses, as we do at Longacres, the law of averages will catch up to you eventually and you’ll be forced to deal with a horse that is dying of old age or serious illness or is mortally injured. When that time comes, there are issues facing the horse owner quite different than dog and cat owners.

If you have an old horse in failing health, how do you decide when the time has come? That’s a tough, tough question and there is no answer that is right for everyone. Here at Longacres we try to plan ahead by retiring old horses to good homes while they’re still able to do light work. Our best case is to give a horse to a home with small children when the horse gets to the point where it can only handle an hour a day or so of light riding. With luck, that horse can have a couple more years of good care and very light work someplace where it is loved and cared for. Dipper, Joey, and Stoney are three of our great old lesson horses that were given to good homes over the past ten years or so where they died peacefully of natural causes a year or two later. O’Brion was another wonderful Longacres horse that we kept for nearly 30 years. He was happy and eating well, but just didn’t have the strength to be ridden near the end. We were lucky enough to find him a home on a farm nearby with a huge natural pasture with a small river running right through the pasture and shade trees along the river bank. It was a dream horse retirement, the situation we wish we could find for every old horse. “O.B.” spent the rest of his days grazing in the shade and died peacefully one night out in pasture.

But retirement farms like we found for O’Brion are hard to find and they are often an expensive option if you can find them at all. More often we’re faced with decisions on when the time has come to put a horse down, or euthanize it. The decision to put an old horse down can come on suddenly as an emergency or it can be a question of whether the horse is suffering and slowly going down hill, something that’s not easy to define. Good people will differ on what is right and wrong when discussing end of life issues. Money plays a part in those decisions. If you can afford to pay for an old horse’s care at a place like we found for O’Brion, then go for it as long as the horse is eating and seems not to be in pain.

One of our most recent and difficult decisions on putting down a great horse came just a couple of years ago when our great old jumper mare, Peppermint Patti, was in the final year of her life. She was still eating well and was still boss of the pasture. But for the last two years of her life, she struggled during the cold winter weather, losing a lot of weight in spite of great diet. Her last summer, she gained back some weight and we actually showed her in Beginner Jumper and SHE WON! But out in pasture even in early fall, she would be shivering every morning and she was rapidly losing weight and condition. It seemed clear to me that she would not survive another winter.

We made the decision to put Patti to sleep and bury her on “Jumper Hill”, our ceremonial grave yard for our greatest old horses right here at Longacres. Some people would have kept this great old horse another winter, hoping she’d make it through and have another year of life. Perhaps she would have. I chose to give her a death with dignity and not let her suffer over another winter season that we knew would be hard on her.

We had a lot of time to make a decision about Peppermint Patti and to make plans for putting her down. Often you have little time. Just this week, we face that kind of situation with Kingsley. He was going down hill very suddenly and the kind thing may be to put him down soon. He’s being made as comfortable as possible while the decision and arrangements are made.

But those arrangements are sometimes complicated. The next part of this article will be quite specific about some of those challenges, so STOP READING here if you don’t want to think about dead horses.

A vet I know recently commented that if a farmer owns “live stock”, they also eventually own “dead stock”. Animals do die, either from natural causes quietly out in pasture overnight, or from being put to sleep by a vet. Or in other ways. And a horse is a big animal. A dead horse in your barn is a big problem. It is no fun getting a dead horse out of a stall in the middle of a barn. I know.

So planning to put down an ailing horse is more than the moral and ethical decision on whether the time has come when putting the horse down is the kindest thing to do. There are very difficult practical decisions to be made. Will you want to bury the horse on your own farm? At Longacres we do, sometimes. Will you need to have a dead animal service come take the horse away? At Longacres we do, sometimes. If the horse is still able to stand, should you have it vanned someplace else where they will put the horse down and take care of the body? There are businesses that provide this service.

If you board your horse at a major stable, they and your vet will likely make all these arrangements for you. All you’ll get is a bill $$$. Vets deal with end of life issues all the time and your vet will know who to call. If you have your own farm, it is wise to talk with your vet or other horsemen and have an end of life plan in place as a part of your stable management plan. Get phone numbers and cost estimates for putting down an old or injured horse and for dealing with the body. When the time comes, you’ll be emotionally upset and it will be easier if you already know what to do.

Vets charge for the barn call and for drugs to put a horse down. It’s in the $100 to $150 dollar range in our part of the country, more in many metropolitan areas. In the old days, horses were shot. They still are in some areas. The harsh reality is that the cost of a bullet is a dollar or two. And shooting a horse if done right is an instant death. But it can also go terribly wrong. And the process can be traumatic for those involved and the stuff of nightmares if you take part. I know. On the other hand, the process of euthanasia with the right drugs by a vet is not pretty either. You can have bad memories and dreams from that if you take part. I know. On the other hand, there is a certain dignity in taking part if a valued horse has to be put down. If you’ve made the decision that destroying a horse is the kindest thing to do in your situation, an argument can be made that you should be the one holding the horse’s lead rope as it is put “to sleep”.

Until pretty recently there was an active market for the bodies of horses that were put down. “Rendering plants” would make use of nearly every part of a horse’s body, including horse hair, horse hide, pet food, glue, and all sorts of products. Those places sill exist, but there are fewer of them and because of regulations, they are less profitable. Not long ago, rendering plants would pay you for a dead horse. And until quite recently, they would pick up a dead horse after it was put down at no charge to the barn owner. Now, rendering plants charge a fee to come get a horse’s body. That fee can range from $200 to a thousand dollars. It pays to check around and have this information as part of your barn management plan.

Some people find the idea of sending a horse to a rendering place repugnant and yucky. I can understand that, although personally I rather like the idea of the horse being useful after the end of its life. But every horse owner has to make that kind of decision for themselves. If you have your own farm and there aren’t local regulations against it, you can bury your animals yourself. A horse is a big animal, and you need machinery to dig that kind of hole. Typically an excavator will charge $200 to $400 to dig a horse sized hole. The actual process of burying a horse can be awkward and emotionally difficult.

This has not been a fun article for me to write, and probably not fun for you to read, if you’ve come all the way to “the end” with me. But death is a part of life. Planning for end of life is important and responsible horse owners need to think about these issues and have answers as part of your stable management plan.

Meghan tells me that the root words from which the term “euthanasia” is derived mean “good death”.