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RE: [RC] Carcass Removal - kathy swigart/Carrie - heidiYou're right, Barbara, pulling the trigger is not easy. But as one who has had to put down my own both by injection and by bullet, it isn't any easier to do it by lethal injection--in fact, I think it's more difficult, simply because it takes longer.
My Dad wrote a poignant poem about putting down an old horse, in which he talks about praying that the tears won't spoil his aim. I wrote a similar poem when I had to put down my old foundation stallion Surrabu--back in the days when we could still leave carcasses out on public lands and when we didn't realize the toxicity of barbiturates to the native wildlife. <sigh> I rode him up his favorite mountain bareback with the euthanasia drugs in a fanny pack (he had bone cancer in his jaw, and was wasting away, and had no quality of life left--but he sure perked up going back out on the trail that one last time), and one of the saddest times in my life was walking back down that mountain with his bridle in my hand. It has been almost 20 years since then, and I still tear up just thinking about it.
For those of you who are not vets, you have someone else push the plunger anyway--and I don't blame folks for asking someone else to pull the trigger. But I have to agree that a well-placed bullet is consistently quicker and less traumatic for the horse.
Heidi
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