This was one of those days we had dreaded for a long time.
Laddie was our blind Arabian who had lived with a major orthopedic problem for years. His left front knee was very arthritic and swollen, and he walked with a limp. Laddie had required regular cortisone injections in his knee and daily anti-inflammatories for comfort. Back on May 7, I had posted a blog update on Laddie and a corrective shoe our farrier was fitting on his left hoof to help with the knee problem.
I said in that post, "…Laddie is a case where every week we assess his quality of life.
These amazing animals can be so stoic that it is hard sometimes to tell
just how much pain they’re in and whether it’s time to make the
ultimate decision. We only get one chance to get it right, and we sure
don’t want to make it too soon … or wait too late."
Alayne was taking Laddie and his buddy blind Shasta out to pasture Saturday morning when she noticed Laddie walking with more effort — his left leg seemed stiff and bowed out to the side a bit. We upped his dose of the anti-inflammatory, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Over the weekend he didn’t wander around the pasture to graze very much and began hanging out in the same spot, a sure sign that it was painful to walk. Shasta, ever the faithful friend, stood right by him.
When I examined Laddie again yesterday, his knee was more swollen than usual, puffy with fluid. When I made him walk so I could watch his gait, he was so stiff he was almost walking as if he had a peg-leg. His knee barely flexed. Worse, now he was dragging his front left hoof. Oh, no. When he wasn’t walking, he stood still, eyes half-closed, looking miserable.
I took Alayne out to see him and show her the changes I was seeing. We both realized the time had come. I called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, and asked if she could come out today.
Back in May, Erin thought we could buy some more time for Laddie with the corrective shoeing. Today, she saw the continued deterioration in his knee and agreed that there was nothing more we could do for him. It was time to let this wonderful boy go.
This one really hurt, because Laddie was the sweetest, gentlest, nicest horse we have ever known. Truly. We adored him. He was a once-in-a-lifetime horse. To make this even more tragic, he was also relatively young (only in his late teens) and otherwise very healthy. Except for that blown-out knee, he looked great.
Alayne took the photo at the top of this post just after Erin had sedated him but before she injected the euthanasia drug. At that point, we were saying goodbye to this gentle soul. Fortunately, you can’t see the tears running down my face. Less than a minute later, Laddie was gone:
While I was bent over Laddie, Erin said to me, "This was the right decision at the right time." And I knew that was the case, but it doesn’t do anything to help with the grief.
And then, in an end-of-life ritual that Erin started us doing last year to help these closely-bonded horses understand that their friend is gone, Alayne brought Shasta over to say goodbye to Laddie:
We will be pairing Shasta up with another of our blind horses this week. I buried Laddie this afternoon here on the ranch.
Goodbye, you sweet boy. We love you.
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One final note: Lots of people have forwarded to us in the past couple of months the story of "Molly the Amazing Pony," who was outfitted with an artificial leg at LSU’s veterinary teaching hospital. So in case you’re wondering why we didn’t try something similar with Laddie: Molly was a very small pony, not a full-sized 1,000-lb horse, and her prosthetic device was fitted below the knee. Laddie’s problem was his knee. A prosthesis was not an option for him. We only wish it were.
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