10/03/2024
The costs of keeping a horse are simply too great to help them all. I get emails nearly weekly about taking someone’s senior and/or lame horse. We simply cannot, unless someone is willing to sponsor their life costs ongoing (or they’re still able to work).
For the seniors, i absolutely feel that it is our obligation, as owners,to keep them until their last breath— either by natural causes or helping them cross humanely.
As we enter the fall, and soon winter, hay production slows.
The unwanted horse ads start to appear.
“Beautiful pasture ornament available, very sweet and kind. Cannot be ridden. But only 6 years old so lots of life left!”
Or
“Retired senior horse. Very arthritic so only pasture sound. We love her but can’t justify keeping a horse we can’t ride. We also can’t keep weight on her and she costs too much to feed!”
There are not enough homes out there for horses that have health issues and are “less desirable” due to not being rideable.
Not saying it’s fair but it’s the reality.
If a person doesn’t love a horse enough to keep them through their retirement, expecting a stranger to do so does not make sense.
In fluke cases, sure you may find the unicorn retirement home that has no bad motives and actually intends to keep the horse until they pass.
But, the fact of the matter is that these types of horses are most valuable when sold to auction, usually for meat.
And if the person who lamed them or owned them into their senior years doesn’t care enough to take care of them for life, a stranger with no attachment to the horse isn’t particularly likely to.
Are there some incredibly generous and kind strangers who do this? Yes.
Are there enough of them to keep up with the “demand” of all of these unwanted horses? No.
Rather than rolling the dice and hoping that these unwanted horses will find a soft landing when they’re given away for free or cheap, consider what kindnesses are within your power to offer them.
1. You could keep them, because an unrideable horse generally costs the same as one who is ridden.
2. If you’re unwilling to do so because of their health issues and lack of “usefulness”, you could give them a humane ending with euthanasia.
Horses don’t fear death like people do. They live in the present moment. They don’t spend time worrying about their mortality or if there’s life after death.
So, if that present moment is a miserable existence, that is what their life is. Miserable. That is their reality.
If all they know in the moment is suffering, that’s what their life is comprised of.
Passing off the unwanted horse to be someone else’s issue in lieu of giving them a humane ending may feel more noble because it extends longevity of life, but it doesn’t factor in quality.
A horse being passed off from home to home, always a second class citizen due to being unrideable, isn’t a kindness.
It is humans continuously evading accountability for the care of the horse and instead passing the horse off to be someone else’s problem.
It is the humans feeling morally superior for doing so because they think keeping the horse alive is a kindness.
Even if the life is no life to live.
Or even if it is condemning the horse to be taken to the auction and sold to a kill buyer.
Love your horses enough to love them through their lack of rideability or at least give them a humane end if it’s between that and rolling the dice and throwing them into a market that is already flooded with unwanted horses.
Horses should hold value whether they’re rideable or not but currently, that’s largely not the case.
Rather than ignoring that fact, people need to be honest with themselves about what they’re actually doing.
What their choices put their horses at risk of.
Let your elderly horse pass in the home they’ve known for so long instead of throwing them out into a new environment as soon as they can no longer be ridden.
Give your lesson horses the gift of retirement after they’ve kept your business afloat instead of pawning them off when they are no longer useful.
Or give them the gift of a good death instead of just making them someone else’s problem.
If you do not love the horse that you’ve spent years bonding with enough to keep them through their “less desirable” stages of life, why would a stranger be more likely to do that for you?
Winter is coming. Don’t throw your damaged horses to the “wolves.”
Part of owning horses is caring about them enough to give them a good end.
If you feel like a bad person for euthanizing them because you know retiring them would be the kinder option, that’s likely a sign that you should buck up and keep them into retirement.
The answer is not playing Russian roulette with your horse’s quality of life.
Stop pawning old and lame horses off onto other people.
There is not the amount of kind and caring homes available that people are making it out to be.
