Some days in this profession are a delight – uplifting, inspiring, motivating. Others are just plain depressing and upsetting. Both can, in their different ways, produce professional satisfaction, even if they don’t both produce quite the same spring in your step.
A recent afternoon was, unfortunately, an example of the latter sort of day. Two ponies to euthanase, two completely opposing sets of circumstances. The contrasts may sound a little apocryphal, too convenient and ‘pat’ to be true, but I promise this was a real day. There is no need for embroidered story-telling when life throws up such handy situations all on its own.
The first pony came care of a telephone call from the council. It had been abandoned in a narrow strip of woodland at the side of a busy A-road with HGVs thundering past. Not tethered or haltered, just abandoned loose. Quite apart from the abject cruelty of the situation, the carnage that could have been caused should this pony have stepped out in front of a queue of 60mph traffic didn’t bear thinking about. Nor did the condition of the pony. She was a cob filly, 3 years old at most, and had had a foal recently. She inevitably had no microchip. Her body condition was best described as ‘emaciated’, in the same way that children seen on news-footage from some far-flung famine can be described as ‘emaciated’. She was severely anaemic, probably in part due to the external parasites that were so thick on her coat that you could barely see her white skin beneath. She had old wounds which had become fly-struck. She also had enough spirit left to give the men from the council the runaround when they tried to catch her. I sedated her and ended her life with as much dignity and respect as I could give her, accompanied by the continuous roar of trunk-road traffic.
From there I drove straight to the home of a nicely well-to-do family who had some years ago purchased a Shetland pony as a companion for their other horses. Unfortunately years of grazing the wide expanses of rich grass afforded to the hunters had taken their inevitable toll on the pony’s waistline and feet and he had suffered from chronic laminitis for some time; the latest bout of which had come to spell the end of the road. He was the polar opposite of the filly – fat as butter, belly virtually scraping the ground. His bulging eyes told of the unbearable pain in his feet. I ended his life with as much dignity and respect as I could give him, accompanied by the noise of his owners wailing for the loss of their beloved pet.
Back at the office I pondered the two ponies – two lives cut short by human neglect. The case of the first pony was clear cut criminal neglect. The only reason that it wouldn’t end in court was the sheer impossibility of finding the owner of the pony. Had this been possible there would certainly have been a prosecution and a lengthy ban from keeping animals. I would have stood up in court and detailed the suffering this pony had endured. The photos would have horrified and convinced any jury that the animal had suffered criminal neglect at the hands of the owner.
The case of the second pony is a little harder to untangle. Morally the owners believed they had looked after their pony to the best of their ability. They were ‘good owners’. The pony had love, expensive vet treatment, luscious grazing as far as the eye could see, company and shelter. What the owners didn’t have, despite many, many explanations, was an understanding of the needs (or lack of needs) of a small native pony designed to live on barren scrubland. They couldn’t bear to see him looking miserable in the carefully designed starvation paddock so let him back out in the knee-high grass with the end result of inflicting an excruciatingly painful and drawn-out death.
I apologise for starting this blog with such a gloomy tone and for focusing on the low points of this job. I went home that day pleased that I had been able to act as an advocate for these two ponies who had suffered enough. I also went home angry at people who were not prepared to look after the needs of animals they had chosen to take responsibility for. But most of all I went home confused as to which of the two cases I found most distasteful. Oddly, I think it may be the second.
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