Sigh.
ETA: I went to visit him on this (Tuesday) evening and got a slightly clearer story. Doc has been displaying signs of pain and listlessness, and the vet has finally determined that he's probably got a liver tumor. Shortly after that discussion, Doc's heart rate spiked so much that the barn didn't think he would survive the ride to the reserve barn where the horses go for their regular vacations. He's stabilized now and is eating like a...well, he's eating, and he doesn't appear to be in pain.
I got the okay from barn staff to treat him like fragile royalty, so we walked just across the street to a small field on Glover for some grazing in ordinarily verboten territory. It was a beautiful evening, warm but not hot, and the light everywhere was rich and buttery. I noticed that Doc's right foreleg spasmed a bit unless he had much of his weight on it, but it didn't seem to bother him; he munched away with abandon. What distressed me came about 30 minutes into his grazing: Midchew, he lifted his head about a foot off the ground and opened his mouth as though he was trying to yawn, but his tongue seemed frozen and his entire head shook. It didn't look voluntary. Alarmed, I walked him back to the barn; he wheezed a little and needed a rest break to cover the few hundred feet. Once he was home, he went back to his hay and grain and apples (love you, buddy) as though nothing was wrong, but it's clear that his time is limited.
The barn's concern is keeping him comfortable. As his blood chemistry deteriorates, he is at risk of progressively more serious neurological symptoms, and now they're trying to balance his quality of life against the grief that putting him down will cause. I am glad to have made the time tonight; I don't know much about end-stage diseases in horses, but my guess is that he won't see the end of the week, and he deserves a clean death.
Doc will always be, in my memory, the stoic, calm, unflappable—apart from his suspicions about deer—hard-working creature who taught me to manage a canter bareback, to see an honest heart inside an unbeautiful exterior, and to accept progress when it came and to otherwise savor whatever I got. I hope that he knows, somehow, how many people he's taught and how well he has been loved.
4 comments:
Hugs for you and Doc. :(
I'm very sorry to hear this. But glad he is in such good hands. I'm sure he loved the little excursion to forbidden grass! It does taste the sweetest. I read Alois Podhajsky's book _My Horses My Teachers_ some years back and admired how he thanked them all, even the ranker ones, for teaching him so much. For a horse to have had a good job and good care is just about the Gold Ring, so that is some comfort. But the sorrow remains real and dense about a dying horse one has loved.
"Giving your heart to a dog to tear"; the end-of-life responsibility for any animal is a painful weight. It helps that the barn staff have never treated the responsibility lightly, and of course that everyone in the e-world and life overall has been kind about this.
allergies. drat.
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