Euthanasia, giving our horses a dignified end, a release from pain, physical or emotional. It is the hardest decision you can make as an horse lover and custodian of their lives.
So many people realize a few months after they’ve chosen to euthanize a horse that they wish they had done it sooner. So many of the extraordinary measures they were trying were allowing their horse to suffer, because the owner wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
What does “sooner” look like?
Are you qualifying bad?
He’s not that bad. She’s not very lame. It could be worse.
Are you grasping at straws with experimental treatments, alternative medicine, more and more frequent, invasive treatments for painful conditions?
Are the success stories that various vets, farriers, nutritionist, and other care providers truly about the horse they saved? Or about them having another “success story”? What is the quality of life of the saved animal?
These professionals love animals, they have devoted their professional lives to some aspect of enriching the lives of the animals they work on. They want to make the animals better, and they have a wonderful sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when they succeed in making an animal better. They also want to make you, the owner, feel better, help you with your animal. They are being professional and fair in offering you all the potential treatments that are out there, and they will often mention alternatives that are financially, very expensive. These treatments can also be extremely expensive with your time. They don’t know your personal threshold for these expenses.
But you, the owner (or caretaker) live with your horse. You’re sharing your space all the time with the harsh realities of that long, and often painful process of getting better.
Just because you can treat something doesn’t mean you should.
What is the trade off between painful recovery and the quality of life, if the recovery actually happens?
Our animals don’t have a say, so no comparing this to your friend who opted for all the most invasive and painful treatments for <insert disease> before they finally died. Because we all die. Nobody is immortal.
Financially, are you being responsible and being realistic about what you and your family can afford to spend on drastic measures? Are you feeling guilty that you have to reach some financial pain point or destitution before you are allowed to say “no more”? Are you comparing what you can afford to someone with an unlimited budget?
The time budget, can you spend the extra hours throughout your days to manage the condition. Are you spending hours researching another option, emotionally riding a roller coaster of is this going to be a good month? Is it taking away from your other responsibilities, spouse, children, job (that probably is paying for it all).
There are a handful of chronic problems in horses where these questions become relevant. Laminitis is one of the most insidious. There are also many other metabolic or structural problems that are not easily managed. EMS/IR, Cushing’s Disease, ECVM, EVM, PSSM, EPM, HYPP, Lyme’s Disease, etc.
I spent years struggling with EMS/IR in Bali, and since 2019, it got harder and harder to keep her sound in the winter. She would have high insulin, get sore, I’d go for X-rays, work with my farrier to get her as comfortable as possible, medication, weight control, soaked hay, tested hay, rinsed beet pulp, balanced minerals, no soybean, no grains, no turnout in pasture, even with a muzzle the last couple of years.
When you live on the same property as your horses, you see them daily. Some people may not notice a gradual decline, others are very bothered by discomfort. Quality of life is very important to me, for my horses. I have happy horses, they enjoy life. I get great joy from being with happy horses.
Bali started having foot pain in August, laminitis. Tested her insulin, took X-rays, they weren’t too bad, but the insulin was out of control. Her diet was as controlled as reasonably possible. Her hay was under 5.5% sugars. She never got to go out, and I upped her Prascend, dropped the diet even more, she seemed to improve and we even had PRP injections done in her coffin joints in November. About a month later, she started to act very sore again. Laminitis is a bitch, because it is bilateral, which means it can be hard to spot. The vet came out, and took new X-rays. I’d pulled her blood to test the insulin, it was out of control. I got 12 days of compounded ertugliflozin, a human drug developed for Type 2 diabetes. It has some success in lowering insulin levels. But it wasn’t available from the Canadian online pharmacy, people in Australia were saying it was going off the market, the compounded version would be $350/month, it was still experimental, and recommended that additional blood work be done while using this, and it was not going to be a drug you could stop using. Her X-rays showed an additional 6.2 degrees of rotation in her left front and another 2 degrees in her right front.
In all my years of managing her, she’d never had that kind of rotation. She was in pain, she spent hours lying down when in her stall, she lost her naughty ways and was very low. Chronic pain can go to acute pain and you don’t notice how bad it is becoming because the horse is used to it.
After a few days of monitoring her discomfort, administering meds that she hated, thinking of her quality of life, talking to my farrier, who would be in it with me every 2 – 4 weeks, and I decided that I was being selfish if I spent a year to get her feet back, right in time for the seasonal rise that makes it worse, she still could not go out on grass, enjoy time with the herd.
I let Bali go on January 2, 2024. I had her since 2005. Her last day was a good day. She went out in the front field, with the herd, with no muzzle. She got to eat regular feed, she got regular treats, rolled, had enough Adrenalin to have a few gallops and bucks. She looked good enough to make me question myself for about 30 seconds. I groomed her, and she was so happy to be allowed to eat grass and carrots. The first step from moving was the true indicator of how much she hurt, but after the first step, she’d just be a bit short strided.
On a happier note, the little IR pony who I board has perfectly managed insulin levels on that strict diet, so it wasn’t all in vain. I learned a lot.
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