Life at All Costs

I've been guilty of it: keeping a horse alive because I wasn't ready to let him go.

Everyone could see he was suffering and wasn't going to make it, but I clung to the last ounce of life he had in him. I tried everything: various vets, medications; I learnt to stomach-tube him water and electrolytes.

We sat together listening to healing frequency music multiple times a day. He held on so long for me, but the bottom line was, he was never meant to stay. Deep down, I knew that too.

It was my stubbornness that refused to listen to what my intuition was telling me. The stubbornness that wanted to prove the vets and all of my friends wrong.

I thought at the time that life was what mattered the most, no matter the cost. When I say 'cost,' I don't simply mean the financial cost, although it is a factor, of course. I mean the strain keeping an animal alive can put on them, physically and emotionally.

The more I become open to the idea that most things in life are a lesson or blessing, and to the notion that death is but a shifting of energy from one state to another. The less resistance I feel to making these hard decisions when they’re in the horse’s best interest.

I've had to make a couple of hard decisions since saying goodbye to Angus. (The horse I've spoken about above).

One was a warmblood gelding with randomly explosive behaviour, whom we discovered had ECVM.

And the second was a hypersensitive QH x mare.

Both were rehabilitation horses who were given to me.

I've always been a bit of a bleeding heart in this respect. With a background in rehabilitation, the part of me that wants to help horses heal sometimes gets carried away and says yes to horses that I know I should say no to.

Many rehabilitation horses become the heartwarming stories of success.

Others come into my life and reinforce the lesson that I seemingly continue to repeat. "You can't save them all, Tori!"

The irony of it is that often, I know from day one which horses are likely to improve and flourish.

Deciding on behalf of another is never easy, especially an animal that doesn't speak the same language....

However, this phrase is also key; they do not speak the same language, but they are constantly communicating, albeit through actions rather than words.

My WB was communicating via his randomly out-of-the-blue erratic behaviour, and my QH was in a constant state of hypersensitivity.

Making the decision to end their life wasn't an easy one, but I knew it was the right one.

Why?

As humans, we cling very strongly to life.

For many people, even if they believe in life after death, Dying is scary because it's unfamiliar and unexplored. You can't visit and see what it's like and then return. It's a one-way street.

We tend to project our uncertainty and fear of death onto our animals.

At times, we keep them alive when our intuition is telling us otherwise.

.... but does this mean quality of life?

As times become tougher in the economy, people are struggling to afford the costs of maintaining those extra horses.

The elderly ones, the unsound ones, the ones with medical needs that require careful management, and of course, the "difficult horses".

There is an influx of them at online auctions, horse deals, and Facebook, often listed as "free to good home".

If you are going to re-home a horse, keep in mind that just because you wrote "good home only" in the advertisement, it doesn't mean the horse will end up in a suitable home. Some of these horses will surely flourish with a new life and new owners.

Unfortunately, not all will be lucky enough to meet the same happy fate. Many become lost in the system and spend a lifetime enduring much worse than humanity's perception of death.

Letting a horse cross over the rainbow bridge in the peace of their own home, surrounded by people and animals who love them, at times, is kinder than many other fates.

I'm certainly not saying that saying goodbye is always the right decision, but I still do feel that, at times, as humans, we pass the responsibility of a "problem horse", "unsound horse", or "old horse" onto someone else because there is too much guilt and second-guessing of whether or not you are making the right decision associated with saying goodbye.

The answer we often find deep within ourselves, behind the layers of ego and fear.