Needed to share this somewhere. My parents have two draft horses (a mare and gelding) who were living out retirement on their property. Basically, it’s a retirement dream for horses - large varied pastures where they can live off only grass late spring-early fall. All but one are almost fully enclosed by woods (this will be important).
Earlier in the summer, the gelding wasn’t looking great. He was getting skinny, but he was also in his mid-twenties, so weight is harder to keep on. Then when I saw them for the first time since then a few weeks ago, he was looking great again! Figured there would be a few more years left before my parents lost one or both of them and had to figure out what they wanted to do with the property.
This morning, I got the call from my mom that they had both needed to be put down. Somehow they managed to break through the fence towards the back of the property near the woods and walked their way into a swamp and couldn’t get out. This was during the day sometime and my parents discovered them when they went to feed in the afternoon. I’m not sure exactly how they were stuck, but my parents and the vet decided there was no way to get them out without hurting them and at their age, it wasn’t worth it. They put them down there and are going to have an excavator come out this week to get the bodies properly buried.
I don’t know why I’m sharing this, maybe looking for others who understand how animals somehow manage to get into exactly what’s bad for them? They should have had at least a few more years left. The only bright side is that these two horses who were together all their lives didn’t have to live more than a few moments without. It’s just going to be hard now going home and not having any horses around. They were the last of my family’s herd that had been there for 30 years.
