Believe it or not, no one wants…

That old horse standing in your pasture, the mare with the arthritic knee who your kids saddle clubbed on until they got cars and jobs and significant others.

That horse you “rescued” from a “kill pen” that’s 26 instead of 12, with an old tendon injury and fusing hocks.

That horse you “rescued” from a “bad situation” but you didn’t know that he had Cushings, no teeth, and failing eyesight.

That horse you bought 8 years ago as a trail horse, but your time and her ability have gradually decreased and now she needs $400 of medications a month to get around the pasture and she’s still costing you the same $450 in board as when you were able to ride, and let’s be honest - there are times in life that becomes a real hardship.

Here’s the deal. We as a species - we as Americans - we’ve gotten really good at passing our personal responsibility on to someone else. And when it’s a living, breathing animal we’ve been committed to for some amount of time - it is just that. It is your personal responsibility. It’s not the local rescue that you had to Google to discover. It’s not the local auction, where your horse will probably end up passed around until he succumbs to illness or injury, or some rescue really does intervene when he’s too far gone to do more than provide a quick end to his suffering.

We get so caught up in the thought process of “oh, but I RESCUED him” or “but someone else can give him so much more” - that we blind ourselves to reality. Who else is there, if not you? YOU are the person he knows and trusts. YOU are the person with the vet records. YOU know that he’s not getting around well, that you’re giving him joint supplements and injections and anti-inflammatories, and they just aren’t doing as much anymore. You know him, and you know he’s having more bad days than good.

Folks, “giving” this kind of horse to a rescue isn’t doing a thing for anyone. It stresses an old horse to move them from what they know. And then the rescue goes through the motions of veterinary diagnoses and medications and fundraising (which doesn’t begin to cover the costs because people see a horse with a rescue as “safe”), and volunteers get attached, and the horse lays down to roll and can’t get up, and then it’s an emergency, and now the rescue has spent $2000 on a horse that should have been euthanized in its home instead of in a new place as an emergency on a cold winter night.

It’s your personal responsibility, as the person who purchased this horse, who provided for his needs for some portion of his life, to take responsibility for the conclusion. There is zero incentive for another human with no emotional attachment to this animal to invest time, money, blood, sweat and tears into an old, broken down horse that is barely able to be kept comfortable living in a pasture. Rescues don’t have a magic formula to “save” old horses from the infirmities of age - and often have less financial resources to medically support them. Even healthy horses with some limitations are difficult to adopt into appropriate homes. The homes who want a horse with $500 a month in special needs that can only stand in a field and be petted - well, they pretty much do not exist - especially not when there are young, rideable horses without those needs, or they can go buy another on a Facebook trader page and brag they’ve “saved” something from a terrible fate.

Look, euthanasia is hard. But in any of these circumstances, it is not the “wrong” decision. There’s nothing heroic in spending a small fortune to prolong an animal’s suffering. There’s nothing heroic in going into debt trying to avoid the inevitable. Horses are big prey animals and they are very good at masking pain, so if you’ve been giving joint supplements and injections and Equioxx and they still struggle to get up and down or they still stand around in pain stance or they can’t stand up for the farrier without a wall for support, or they’re still dropping weight and bloodwork shows organ disfunction - it is absolutely not wrong to let them go. Please don’t pass that responsibility on to someone else.

If you see yourself in this blog, or if you feel you’re out of options and considering euthanasia but concerned about the costs, you likely qualify for a Charlie’s Fund grant. This program is designed to cover the costs of evaluation and euthanasia while keeping the horse in the home they have known.