Yes, but…
… do you want to have a horse that must be kept in specific circumstances that may not be what you want to do, or may be something you can’t do? (You’re there now with the boarding dilemma.)
I worked with mine. I had some really super times with him. But it could be like flicking a light switch sometimes. Or maybe a crapshoot would be a better analogy.
I had a horse, before the one I posted about earlier, who was very spooky. He improved but still had randomly spooky episodes. Years into ownership we discovered he had a fixed bone chip in his hock. He was more spooky on days his hock was painful. He’d had that chip when I bought him, eight years before we found it.
That was an obvious issue that would have been found easily if I’d ever had reason to do a lameness workup. My neurologic horse not so much. Even when we did x-rays and sent them to the experts, we got back wildly opposing opinions. Some things cannot be definitely diagnosed in a living horse. Some things can’t be definitely diagnosed even after death. Neurological issues are often defined by best guess after excluding things they aren’t - usually involving numerous, expensive tests. If you haven’t been exposed to neurological issues, you are unlikely to recognize them. So many symptoms could be due to something else.
Obscure pain can be like that too. I read about a horse who became dangerous, and skeletal examination after death found deformed bones in the lumbosacral part of the spine that affected how the horse moved. Trying to make the horse use themselves correctly caused a great deal of pain and suffering.
We see the redemption stories on social media. At one point you could have created one yourself. Maybe you could get to that point again in the future. We don’t see those who try and fail. Or those who succeed, post their triumph, and have a catastrophic failure later with that same horse.
The thing that everyone (vets, caregivers, saddle fitters, etc) said about my neuro horse after I euthanized was “I learned so much from him.” If you believe in such things, that was his purpose - to teach me and others. The first horse teaches us more than we could have imagined before we got them. One of those things is when to let go.
Your mare has taught you more than most first horses. You can sometimes break through resistance and forge a bond. And that bond doesn’t solve all the problems.
Only you know all the information about the situation. Only you can set your feelings and defensive responses aside and truly assess the situation. Only you can look at everything you do and see how much you’re actually doing to keep her from getting upset. Only you can decide how much you’re willing to do to keep her and everyone around her safe.
There’s no need to decide now. You can take some months and really try to dispassionately observe everything, and assess things. If you resist the knee jerk defense reactions you’re feeling when you read these posts.
