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- My Old girl Melody
Sunday was a tough day for me. A day I knew was coming but knowing didn’t make it any easier. I had to have my horse put down and buried.
She was an old horse. We figured she was at least 30-years-old. I have only owned her for about 3 1/2 years but I bought her from a friend and had ridden her a lot for a couple of years before I bought her.
I will not give all the gory details but two weeks ago Sunday I called the vet to come out and look at her because she had lost a lot of weight and there was something obviously wrong. His diagnosis was that there was probably a tumor in her throat or she was suffering from a not unheard of condition called larangeal paralysis. The flap in her throat was not closing when it should and feed was not getting down into her stomach but she was coughing/sneezing most of her feed up through her nasal pasages. In case it might be “just an infection” a round of antibiotics was prescribed. For that week she actually seemed to improve slightly…the drainage from her nose even subsided somewhat. A couple of days later it returned with a vengance.
Saturday night, when my kids went to turn her and our other 3 horses out of their stalls after feeding, as she came out of the stall she fell down. She managed to get back up and was standing when I went out to check on her. But I knew then that if she made it through the night I would have to call the vet Sunday morning. When I got home Sunday morning around 8 a.m. from my part-time job she was still standing. However within about 5 minutes of my arriving home she went down. And she never got up again. She tried. She tried like hell several times. But she just didn’t have the strength to get back on her feet. I don’t believe there was any pain…there was no sign of that. Just her body shutting down and the absolute inability to get back up again.
The vet came about an hour and a half later and my daughter and I stroked Melody’s head as the fear and confusion left her eyes and she fell peacefully to sleep.
I will miss the old girl. I hadn’t had much time in the last year or so to ride because of working 2 jobs but up until about a month ago she would have been strong enough to take me about anywhere I could have wanted to go. For a while, in my mind I will see her body being pushed into the hole in the earth dug by the backhoe and the dirt being scooped back into the hole on top of her. But I know that there was nothing else we could do. The vet confirmed that her organs, including her liver, were just shutting down. And I know that Mel knew she was loved.
Good-bye my old friend! Sleep peacefully! God needed another horse and he got a good one!
