11/01/2024
End of life - Not long ago horsemanship meant personally having the ability to help bring a horse into this world and the knowledge to properly end a horse's life when the time came. This skill has almost completely disappeared. Today ending a horse's life has been transferred to the Vet. Like so many of the other disappearing elements of traditional horsemanship, leaving the end of life process to the Vet is driven by an increase in emotionality and anthropomorphism by so many of today's horse owners.
Death is a universal experience. People, horses, dogs, plants all die. When it is our turn, it is our responsibility to deal with it. Burying a parent, a loved one or ending our horse's life does come around to us. This is getting more difficult because science keeps extending life, creating the illusion that death won't come, but the responsibility for our horse's end of life remains. "I don't want to think about it. Call the Vet" is today's way of denying the end of life reality.
This dynamic sets up an immediate conflict of interest for Vets. When you ask a Vet to end your horse's life, they will have one less client. If they employ all the science at their disposal to extend a horse's life, their bottom line grows. Most Vets I have known are smart, responsible individuals who want to do the right thing. But faced with today's typical horse owners, they are forced into a position more like dealing with someone's child than their livestock. I think it is insensitive and unfair to place 100% of this burden of when to end your horse's life on your Vet.
Vets have a distinct occupational smell that horses smell from far away. It comes from disinfectants, pharmaceuticals, etc. That Vet smell makes many horses nervous based on their prior experiences of injections, tubes, poking and prodding, associated with Vet care. Additionally, many Vets today are in a hurry as they confront the increasing challenge of making a mobile service business work in today's economy. I am therefore questioning if having the Vet end your horse's life is as ideal as many horse owners today believe.
For me and other lifelong horsemen and women, the best way to end a horse's life is to construct a peaceful, unsuspecting end that respects a horse's life and their service. Having played polo for many years, I knew polo players who owned many horses over their careers. They all had six horses for each season. I played 25 seasons. Many players retire and keep their "best ponies" until their end out of respect and wonderful memories.
A lot of experienced horse people do not like the tension of a typical Vet euthanasia after owning many horses and having put several down. Because my farm was a fun place full of kids, and because some of my polo friends did not have the heart themselves, I took care of the end of life of some of their cherished horses.
Friends would ask me to end the lives of long loved horses when the time came. They knew my young students would love their horse when it arrived at my farm, and that their horse would be comfortable and happy to the end. Often, when an old, retired polo horse came to my farm, they would give very young students their first ride on a real horse, not a small pony. Being ridden again by a lightweight kid makes a horse feel young and useful again.
"When the time came" the owner would drop off their horse for a week to a month. There was a place on the farm in the woods, by a quiet stream, with enough sun to grow some nice grass. I would walk the retired horse, sent to me for a better end, to this peaceful spot everyday for exercise and a treat. I'd remove the lead and allow the horse to freely graze and get a drink from the creek.
On a day when the weather was nice, I'd walk the horse to that quiet place by the creek as usual carrying a small caliber gun. I'd carefully draw the "X" on their forehead with something unthreatening, chalk for dark horses, charcoal for light. It is important to draw the "X" very carefully, no matter how many times you've done it, because the horse brain is so small, and you do not want to miss. It is important to draw the lines as shown in the image below, from the top of the ears to the top of the eyes, to get the correct center of the "X". Then, very carefully I'd raise my gun barrel to the center of the "X" (note the angle of the arrow in the diagram) and put a bullet through the intersection into the brain.
A horse put down in this manner feels nothing. There is no pre-stress. They experience nothing unusual to disturb the peace in the moment, and they collapse to the ground like a sack of potatoes in their last second. Once on the ground, there is some postmortem body tremor, particularly in the legs. When I first taught an apprentice how to do this and the tremor began, she freaked out. It can feel like an eternity until the tremors end but it really is brief. Then, I'd go get the tractor and remove the remains to a place where arriving students for the day could not see. The kids knew why the old horse had come and I simply told them that the horse's time had gone.
Here in Pennsylvania, we have "professional" Amish castraters. They do cows, goats, horses, sheep, etc. and they are extremely good at it. They use no medications, but rather a twitch and a razor sharp scapple. I prefer these castraters to any Vet's because it's all they do, and they do it so well. It is getting more difficult, if you are not Amish, to hire them because they fear prosecution from authorities for "practicing medicine". But like the non-Vet euthanasia experience, done right is less stressful.
Perhaps a better solution to these kinds of processes like death and castration should be handled more like equine dentists. Maybe these specialists should be licensed as specialists after a proper test. We'd see fewer infections in castrations because the tranquilizers used slow blood flow, and blood flow is the best defense against infection. Likewise, I think there should be a license for specialists in euthanasia because this way to end a horse's life is better for the horse. Plus, these licensed support professionals would free up Vets' time for more challenging work.
The picture of the soldier below is from a scene in the movie "In Pursuit of Honor", a pretty realistic and accurate docudrama about the last days of the US Cavalry. In one scene, a Cavalryman has to put down his much loved horse. His process is quite accurate.
