Not a nice topic

[georgiegirl]

My sister picked up 5 rescue mares last week and one needs to be put down. She knew that when she bought the horse, but assumed she would just take her to the vet and that would be that. She found out the vet no longer has a man who comes by for the animals and the vet cannot dispose of it. That is a big problem for most of us!! How do any of you deal with this? The decision is hard enough, without the extra emotional strain of disposing of the body.

I didnt ask whether it was legal or not when I buried, first, my sons very old bulldogging horse and then more recently my old show horse, Seven S Shamrock.

I had a neighbor with a backhoe come and dig a big holes in front of my barn on two different occasions. Both Blanco and Rocky rest in front of the barn where they spent their retirement years in contentment.

If anyone had any complaints I never heard them. It would not have done them any good to complain anyway because that was where both horses were going to be no matter what anyone said.

My vet put both of them to sleep for me. She was very compassionate about the whole thing.

 

[georgiegirl]

Well..... what about donating them to a college/university? Some veternarian schools will take horses to use towards science. I know that I've donated a few (big ones) to Iowa St. when they were permanetely lame and to keep them sounds was beyond what I could ever afford.

I will not go into any details regarding donating anything to any college/university. If you care anything about your horse, at all, you need to know what is involved and you need to read all the very fine print, and understand it thoroughly.

You need to know all of the details and read the paperwork VERY carefully.

I cannot reccommend that to anyone.

My experience with that type of thing is a continuing nightmare!!!

 

[minimule]

I just went through this here. We do have a service that will come pick up an equine. They would have charged $150 to come to my place. For half the cost you can haul it to them....that's what I did. They collect deceased animals and then a truck comes every day to every other day depending on how many they have to pick up. I won't go into details about what they do for that.

The dump costs $200 for a small equine. Cremation is $350 for group and $800 for individual.

I've also used a backhoe and buried my big boy here. The guy charged me $100 to dig the big whole. He recommended a bag of lyme to help the body decompose quicker. He said as long as you keep the body 100' away from a well you're OK.