When the Sky Darkens

Logan helpfully keeps the grass from needing to be mowed.
Logan helpfully keeps the grass from needing to be mowed. Photo by Caroline Frandsen.

Letting go is the hardest thing a horse owner ever faces. Scheduling the vetenarian and the disposal of the carcass makes you feel like you’re plotting to murder a beloved family member. It’s the hardest decision to make, and make it I must. The inside of Logan’s right front hoof looks like an angry, spiky cactus on the x-rays, due to aggressive arthritis. He’s had a long and sometimes difficult life.

Logan started his working life as a coal mine horse in Poland. From there, he somehow ended up in Fredericia as a riding school pony for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years. And finally, he’s had a year now with us at Caroline Frandsen’s RideCare barn near Fredericia, and we have done our best to spoil him rotten. We speculate that he’s a crossbreed between a Jutland horse and heaven above knows what only, because he has the colour and build of one, though he is not quite tall enough. His age is guesstimated to be between 26 and 30 plus.

Over the last six months his arthritis has gradually worsened. At first he was no longer able to carry a rider in trot and gallop — but I could still ride him on quiet walks. As of two weeks ago, though, that too came to an end. Last night the vetenarian and I made the decision, and he will be put down come Monday. Until then, he’s being kept on pain relief medication.

Too sick for lessons, but never too sick to graze.
Too sick for lessons, but never too sick to graze. Photo by me.

I am going to miss him terribly, and so are a lot of other people. During the short 14 months he was in Taulov, he’s made himself so very much at home that everybody knew him, and he was everybody’s big cuddlebear. Going to be a a hole in reality the shape of a little red draft horse that’s going to take some effort to fill out.

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