I PUT YOUR HORSE DOWN TODAY…
He was old. Twenty five or thirty.
Sweltering hot, sweat dripped from his old shaggy and Cushings ridden coat. He stood at the auction with his head hung so low.
He was wondering where you were and how he got here. And I was wondering the same.
Not a drop of water or hay in sight— he was portly and his mane had been brushed. He’s been loved at some point.
Not now. Now he stood in the holding pen waiting to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
When they brought him into the ring, the raucous calls off the announcer frightened him but he followed faithfully behind the auction workers— he didn’t know them but he trusted blindly. You taught him that. Not to run when he was afraid — to go against his most basic instincts. To ignore them and trust…
Be a good boy and nothing bad will happen to you… that’s what we tell our horses. And we hope it never turns out to be a lie.
My hand flew in the air before I could control myself.
I bid on him again and again. It was me and the Meat Buyer— he was a fat little guy after all your horse— and I just couldn’t let him disappear into the slaughter pipeline to end up on a Canadian, European or Mexican dinner plate.
$375 later and he was mine.
The real work began now. You taught him to trust people and he trusted me straight away. He followed me into the trailer right to the vet— the diagnosises kept coming: ring bone, navicular, Cushing diseases and all the things old age tosses at our best friends.
I guessed at why you threw him away. He’d grown and expensive and was only taking and taking— he could no longer give.
But he was well trained. So well trained that when a naughty escaped elementary school child wandered into his pasture and scrambled aboard his back— he kept her safe, walked calmly with no bridle or saddle, and when she was discovered and properly dressed down— a barefoot bandit, hair undone in the last of summer light, I felt such a kindred spirit with her.
And her appreciation of a dammed good horse.
He’d been loved and he gave and gave and gave until his body could give no more. Now he needed… he needed help that no one was willing to give.
So we fixed that. We gave him injections and previcox and special shoeing— everything we could think of to make him comfortable in a pasture and for awhile it worked.
Until I think we came to the same place you did. When it stopped working and he went back into pain again.
But instead of dumping him at a sale.
I braided his mane. I groomed him with my young friend, and we talked of all the lives we thought he lived — a fearless show horse jumping impossibly tall fences, a proud dressage one cantering down center line, or maybe he worked cows in a western saddle.
In every story he was a fearless hero.
In every story he was the best boy who ever lived.
We fed him treats and alfalfa hay and we spent those hours talking away the last of the fall weather.
It’d been months with our beautiful boy— but we loved him fiercely.
I walked him down to his favorite tree where his vet waited. We stood together for awhile. He grazed and we talked, and then it was time.
I put your horse down today.
He took a big part of my heart with him.
And he taught a little girl about love… and he taught her about loss too.
I did it because you were too selfish to do it.
I did it because he deserved to say goodbye to someone who loved him. That needed to be the last thing he ever saw.
He earned that.
So even though I didn’t want to, even though it hurt me, I did for him.
I put your horse down today.
Where were you?
This post is dedicated to Linus: the best boy who ever lived.
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