Coming out of a LONG time lurking to say: I DID spend that $15k and never truly diagnosed the horse.
OP, I bought a three year old off the track. She was a happy, lovely horse for the first couple years. I’m talking taking her out in a halter and lead rope for a bareback trail ride levels of trustworthy. At five, something changed and she started rearing and bolting. Spontaneously, out of the blue, we could be working on an active working trot or extended canter or walking on the buckle, and next thing I knew I had teleported across the ring. She ran blindly, without consideration for other horses, and there was no stopping her. It wasn’t malicious, it was like a switch flipped and she lost her mind for a moment. After she was pulled up, she was frequently either scared, or simply went back to the exercise as if nothing had happened.
For TWO YEARS I poured money into this horse. Trainers. Diets. Supplements. Time off. She went to TWO equine hospitals in my area (big names) and by the end of it, I had x-rays of every joint in her body, a bone scan, multiple things had been injected, etc.
I did this because on the ground, she was an absolute sweetheart. Fine to handle, trailered, sweet with other horses. I wanted so badly to figure out what was wrong. I was also younger, and braver, and throughout this, I kept riding her because I could sit her episodes, and we could have two weeks of good rides with no episodes, working happily.
It culminated at an in-barn show. We had been working on our First Level test for weeks and we were going to NAIL it. She walked into her home ring, made it once around, and melted down. And this time I didn’t stay on past the initial bolt. To this day I remember being on the ground underneath her, looking up and being convinced she was about to flip backwards and crush me.
In the two weeks that I was agonizing over my decision, her episodes started appearing on the ground as well, even standing out in the pasture. I had the option to keep her as a pasture pet on my own property, but decided that I didn’t want to walk out one day to find that she had broken her neck after falling backwards in a rear or had impaled herself on a fence post.
I had the full support of her entire vet team, my trainer, friends and family. I cried for weeks, every time I made a payment towards the huge bills I was left with, and I’m crying now while typing this, four years later. But shame on anyone telling you that euthanizing isn’t a viable option (perhaps the only viable option) in this situation. These are 1000lb animals that can severely injure/kill not only themselves, but the humans around them. You cannot ethically give this horse to someone else, and a “full disclosure” doesn’t prevent someone from suing you. Even if he doesn’t badly hurt someone, he will eventually just work his way down the spiral of horse ownership until he ends up somewhere unfortunate. Or if you stick him in a pasture somewhere, he’ll end up in front of a car or in some catastrophic accident where you’ll have to put him down while in a crisis mode, and both of you deserve better.
(As an aside, the mare above completely shot my confidence to an extent I didn’t even realize in the moment, as I kept getting on her over and over again. Years later, I am STILL fixing the defensive habits and subconscious fear caused by her behavior, which is doing no favor to my current patient equines.)
