Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Quality of Life Vs. Money

This is exactly what happened to a client of ours.  Some busybody neighbors
called the local animal control because a couple of the horses looked
bad...one was a horse Nelson had been working on for a long time.  She had
broken coffin bones (the tips were deteriorating), was constantly abcessing
and required expensive therapeutic shoeing (which we gave her at cost for
materials for special packing and glue on shoes).  Yeah, she should have
been put down but the two times the vet came to do it, she ran to the back
of the pasture and could not be caught.  Hmmm....she had some muscle atrophy
and could not move well (except when the vet came to put her to sleep) and
was SPOILED rotten.  She also had a carbohydrate intolerance and they had to
watch her weight so she didn't get too heavy.  What did the animal control
people do when they came to look?  No one was there.  So they offered her
GRAIN.  Jerks.  The other was an older pony with Cushings.  They required
her to take both horses to MSU for evaluation or they would order the horses
destroyed (never mind that she had 15 other very healthy and happy horses on
the premises).  Never mind that Nelson AND the lady's vet came out and met
with them and explained the horses' problems.  It was ugly.  She did take
them to MSU and spent a ton of money with more X-rays.  She ended up putting
the one mare down as X-rays revealed her feet were even worse....there was
no cure.  But we just felt that it was the OWNER'S decison to put them down.
It was not ours or anybody else's place to force them to do so.  It was
awful.
Maggie


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