Last night we had to euthanize our horse, Danika. She would have been 20 on May 1st.
I did not grow up around horses (or dogs or chickens for that matter) but Andrea loves them and I’ve learned a lot about them from her. If you think about it, most animals we keep as pets, such as dogs and cats, are predators. Horses are prey animals, and it took me awhile to understand their behavior because of that distinction. Their flight instinct is deeply ingrained, and being such large animals the usual methods of correction (say, hitting them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper) don’t work (and yes, I realize I may have to explain “newspaper” to one of my three readers).
Another thing about horses is that they can’t throw up. If something goes wrong in their digestive track it only has one way out, and if that doesn’t work for whatever reason you have issues.
But I get ahead of myself.
Back in 2005, Andrea wanted to get another horse (to go with our existing two). To make a long story short we ended up getting two horses, Danika and Abbey, in November of that year.
It was weird being around foals, because even then they were much larger than a large dog and they didn’t know much about anything (you have to teach them to eat carrots, for example). Abbey was the horse Andrea wanted but we ended up with Danika as well. The farm we bought them from was focused on Paint/Draft crosses and since Danika didn’t have any paint on her she was really inexpensive.
When we got her that liver chestnut coat coupled with the blond hair made me want to name her Kato Kaelin, but instead I named her Danika after Danica Patrick (yes, I spelled her name wrong).
She was so sweet.
She would grow up to be the smallest of our horses by a long short (about 14.5 hands) but she was also the most brave. Defying her “prey” instincts she was more like a big dog, scared of little and interested in everything.
All of our horses have great lives, as they don’t have to work too hard. Both of our careers took off and we didn’t have much time to spend with them, but we did send both Danika and Abbey off to be trained under saddle. I don’t have any pictures of me on her but I did find one of Andrea:
In the summer of 2023 we moved to a new farm and Danika immediately felt at home. Even with the construction equipment for the barn Danika was rarely skittish, and we had to put up some boards to keep her from going in to the barn while it was being built. Outside of poop there wasn’t much she would do but with loose nails, etc. we didn’t want to take the risk of any of the horses getting hurt.
Here’s a picture of Danika from that time with our gelding Mac.
So things were pretty good until yesterday. Andrea and I were doing some work outside a little after 5pm and Danika was fine. We finished up, had dinner and turned on the Oscars for something to watch.
Andrea feel asleep on the couch and I got bored so I went to bed. A little before midnight Andrea woke me up and said that she went to bring the horses in but Danika didn’t come, so I suited up and we grabbed some flashlights to go look for her.
We found her near the fence, and she was on the ground rolling. Now horses roll all the time, usually in the summer to scratch an itch, but they do it once or twice and then stop. With Danika we knew she was in pain because she kept rolling but we managed to get her on her feet.
Colic is a serious issue with horses and the first thing you do is try to keep them moving in the hope that whatever is causing their distress will work itself out. Andrea called our vet, the amazing Polaris Equine, but since the move they are now an hour away. This was around 1am. We gave Danika some bute to help with pain, and we took turns keeping her moving. Now even though she was small, she is still well over a thousand pounds, so when she wanted to lay down and roll there wasn’t much you could do.
The vets showed up about 2am, and gave her more pain killers and a sedative so they could diagnose the issue.
Once she was calm they got out the ultrasound and the prognosis was not good.
Horses have about 70 feet of small intestine, and in Danika’s case some of hers had become “looped”. This traps the waste inside the loops and prevents it from passing. Over time the intestine will become necrotic. The fact that she was fine gave us hope that we had caught it early, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
The vet gave us two possible scenarios. The first involves a type of cancer that forms small tumors connected by a string of tissue. The string part eventually gets wrapped around the bowel and causes the loops. The only recourse for that is surgery.
The second issue could be an infection. In this case you don’t need surgery and you can treat it with medicine, but then you have to push intravenous fluids frequently, on the order of 20 liters at a time. That also requires hospitalization.
In North Carolina we are lucky to have an amazing veterinarian school in Raleigh, but they aren’t cheap and there was no guarantee that Danika would recover.
In order to determine which scenario was more likely, the Vet wanted to get a sample of the abdominal fluid. If it was red then it was likely the first one (cancer and surgery). If it was a yellowish color that would indicate infection.
We managed to get Danika to stand one last time so she could insert the needle, and the fluid came out red.
Being nearly 20 years old we made the decision to have her put down. I know that 20 may seem like a long time, but our last horse lived until she was 32. It was way too soon.
Being curious, I asked the Vet how many of these euthanasias do they do in a year. I was surprised to learn that it is around two to three a week. Apparently North Carolina is a haven for elderly horses.
Around 4am we managed to get back in to bed and to start to thaw (it was 24F last night). This morning I woke up with the sad task of finding someone to dig a big hole. We have a guy coming late afternoon.
It’s always hard losing a pet but it seems to be amplified with horses. I guess it is because they are just so darn big and having one connect with you is magical.
Danika will be missed.