My mistake cost the life of my best friend, its my fault

“I caused the death of my horse. I killed my best friend with a dumb mistake. I hate myself and am not sure how to move on.

I live on my own farm. It’s a dream farm for me. I was so excited to bring both of my horses home and get to see them everyday. My boy hadn’t been doing too well for the past year and a half. He had some serious arthritis that I was treating with my vet. He couldn’t be ridden much due to that, which was fine! I just wanted him comfortable and happy. Horses can live with arthritis for a really long time, so I thought I had 10 more years with him….

Here’s where it started to go wrong. On a Thursday when I went out to give them breakfast, my guy was standing on three legs – the night before he was fine. Immediate alarm bells for me. I videoed him hobbling, called my vet and sent the video, called a second vet and sent the video and both agreed it appeared to be an abscess. I didn’t see an obvious sign of an abscess but they can hide in the hoof. I immediately poultice wrapped his bad hoof and put him on pain meds per advice from the vet. He stayed in his stall for 24 hours to reduce his activity and stay off his foot. The vet agreed to come on Monday. At this point, it was not an apparent emergency. Vet was on stand by if something went wrong. She couldn’t come unless it was a true emergency due to other appointments.

On Friday, he was able to use his leg again! I took the poultice wrap off and still found no abscess… which scared me because maybe it wasn’t an abscess. So I called my vet again. She still agreed to come on Monday and it was a good sign he was walking albeit with a limp. He was alert and interested in food. By the afternoon he started laying down too often. I now thought he was colicing. So again I called my vet. We treated for colic. I stayed up with him all night.

My biggest mistake was this. My friend was scheduled to bring her horse out to my barn on Saturday morning to board with me. I called her Friday night to let her know if my horse didn’t come around we might need to postpone. But Saturday morning he was eating and walking around. So I let her bring her horse out. In my mind, it was a very low risk scenario since these horses have been pastured together before and knew each other very well.

But when my friend’s horse arrived. My gelding got excited and trotted a bit on the fence line. I can only imagine his few strides of trot are what drove the nail in his coffin. The horses settled quickly and while they were standing there his leg essentially exploded. It was gruesome. I knew immediately it was broken. My vet came as quickly as possible and he was put down within 80 mins of his leg breaking.

If I hadn’t let my friend bring her horse (when I knew my horse was having an issue!!) he might still be alive. It is apparent to me now, his leg was already fractured on Thursday when he couldn’t walk and he was only able to walk on it again due to the pain meds. I thought I did all the right things. Calling vets, sending videos, treating as instructed but none of it was good enough. I killed him. Of course, if I had known we weren’t dealing with an abscess I wouldn’t have let my friend come. But my negligence and poor decision making cost him his life.

I didn’t have an autopsy but there is a suspicion he had bone cancer. Legs don’t just… explode and he’d been having issues in it for a year. It was hard to catch bone cancer because he DID have arthritis and his issues were very characteristic of arthritis. We did X-rays and ultrasounds on all of his joints… but not his femur. So we missed it. I should have known. I should have been more diligent in figuring out what was wrong. I don’t care how much the vet costs, I would have spent all of my money to save him. But it’s too late.

This is my story. I killed my horse. I hate myself and feel like I’m not really cut out for caring for horses. Thanks for listening, I guess I just needed to share and probably should go get therapy.”