Extra horses are a very tough issue to deal with. Last year I wrote ridecamp about a young gelding that I have raised since he was 6 months. He was diagonised with a degenerative hock joint. At the time the vet catagorized him as a grade 2 lame. He told me to turn him out for a year and hope that the joint would fuse. It has been over a year now and the vet upgraded him a month ago to a grade 3 lame. The gelding is 5 coming 6. We have come to the conclusion that this horse will not be usable for my purposes and may even need to be put down if arthritis has settled into the joint. I hate the thought of having to do that. If he is not in major pain I wouldn't mind keeping him as a pasture pet but my endurance mare is coming 17 and I know I will be needing a new horse soon. As with most of us, my resources do not allow me to keep a horse just because I am fond of him. I looked at a nice 9 year old mare last evening and am considering acquiring her to start riding. My ideal hope would be that I could find someone that would love to have a pasture pet that I could pass my very loveable gelding on to, but I don't have high hopes that will happen. I guess in the real world we just can't always keep all the horses we would love to have.
