Re: Lucky successfully disintacted

M Healey wrote:
Kathleen <khhfmdeletethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

...As I raced to retrieve my daughter from school and headed out
to the stable I was thinking leg fracture, bad news, but maybe it
wasn't as bad as all that, maybe it was fixable if we threw enough
money at it, plates, pins, external fixators, maybe, maybe it would be
okay, we could at least try...


You'd think, with horses being longer-lived and less closely tied to our everyday lives than dogs, that they wouldn't break our hearts quite so often or so easily. Hug your daughter for me, and tell her I was sorry to hear of her loss.

Thank you. I will.

Regis was put down on Memorial Day last year - May 29, 2006. A few weeks earlier, Barbaro had broken down in the Preakness, and there were many stories in the news about surgical advances and treatments. At the time, Barbaro's prognosis was guarded, but he was euthanized 6 or 7 months later because he foundered from the strain.

ISU Vet College is about 3 miles from where Regis was boarded, so we were in a good position to do whatever was possible to do. But my vet told me, flat out, that by its nature a compound fracture results in bone infection. Added to that, the bones were broken an inch or two above the joint, and there was too little left on the joint side to fix a pin.

Combine those factors with the fact that the broken leg was his only "good" leg -- he had suspensory ligament damage in the two fronts, a old bow in the left front, and check ligament surgery for stringhalt in the left hind. Even if we'd been able to repair the break and kept infection at bay, he wouldn't have been able to slep (check ligament surgery removes the ability to "lock" the leg, limiting the horse's ability to sleep standing up).

I miss him, and it was difficult to put him down, but the decision was easy because the alternatives were so limited. I've been so fortunate, in a way, that after a reasonably long, healthy life, most of my critters have suffered some calamity that left euthanasia as the only rational option.

Aw, hell. I'm sorry about Regis but at least you understood that there was no other option. That's why I went and got my daughter; she deserved to bear witness and understand in her own heart that there was no other way, no second-guessing, no recriminations.

I haven't been as lucky as you. Except for the horse, catastrophes were either immediately fatal or else fixable. I've never had a critter succumb suddenly and quietly in bed, either. The decision to euthanize an elderly animal was always horrible, the result of a gradual loss of quality of life.

.

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