horses Friendships and Losses

Horse friendships,and losses

This is our experience with our herd and our choices-every one makes can make their choice on how to handle a lose.

This blog is hard to write because it deals with the loss of a friend. Prince was our second rescue. Our farrier asked us to take him out of the life of neglect he was living in. He had been used for gaming (not that there is anything bad about gaming, just Prince's owner was not a good person) . Ridden hard and when injured not taken care of. His body was broken in many places, It had been a year since any farrier work. He was a lovely boy. We gave him the best care we could with no expectation from him. He loved the track and being with his 2 best friends, Riley and Sadie. The 3 of them would hang out all day.

One morning I noticed he was not eating or drinking. His mouth would hover over the water bucket but not drink. He would also shiver all over, and stumble everywhere. The vet came out. We scoped him to find out what was going on. The vet saw a black mass. Stopped everything. took the tube out and told us we needed to make a decision very quickly. Take him to the horse hospital for surgery, with a small chance of survival or even make it to the hospital, or putting him down.

He had a fungus that was eating away its way to his brain and was affecting his nervous system. It had reached a major artery and he would bleed out and die very soon.

We choose a peaceful death for this soul that had been treated so badly. We could not see him suffer any more.

We put him on the track with his 2 buddies, Sadie and Riley while the vet was getting everything ready., It was a wonderful moment just watching them being together for the last time. I will not presume to know if they knew he was dying or not.

The vet was wonderful, We choose to have him fall asleep forever in the arena.

Once his soul had left his body, we decided ( every one has different thoughts about how to handle this), but we choose to let Sadie and Riley say goodbye just as we did. We brought Sadie in first in the arena where Prince's body lay.

She went straight to him, smelled his mouth then his behind, Back to his mouth and then took of running and kicking. She repeated this several times coming and going. We then brought in Riley who did the same thing. It was so interesting to watch this behavior. The grief Daniel and I felt was overwhelming we went to hug and cry over our Prince's body Sadie and Riley joined us, sniffing Prince, and all four of us stayed in that moment for a few minutes. Daniel and I had a magical moment in grieving for a friend with his friends, Sadie and Riley.

We did let the rest of the herd say goodby. brought each one into the arena. But non of the others reacted the same way. They smelled Prince's mouth once and just walked away.

In watching the herd, we have seen this behavior of grieving from the horses. If one of the boarders leaves the horse who's friend it was will call out, wait for a response, if they do not get one they will start to rear and kick and running, stop call out again and repeat this process. This can go on for 30 minutes. and then it is over they move on. Love your horse and learn what they have to teach us.