MYour beloved friend Pancho is a purebred tramp who has been with me for 24 years. As a youth in the early 2000s, he enjoyed a vigorous mid-level career on the Southern California competitive circuit. He is now almost 28 years old and his life is approaching its natural end. Our life together riding the trails has been the greatest gift. But its slow decline makes me face the alarming possibility of euthanasia. This decision haunts me constantly, like a whispering genie. Some days are good, some are not. Although I fear the day when I walk into the barn and he lets me know that he needs my help to die, I am consoled only by the dignity of his life. He has a privilege where many thoroughbred horses of his time and thousands of descendants did not. As it was then, as it is now and as it will be, there is ultimately no dignity for a young racehorse who dies on the track.
As the thoughts of Pancho's gradual deterioration weighed heavily on me, I took a job at a large equine hospital to fill the gaps in my knowledge and learn how best to care for him when health problems arose. But after a while I admitted to myself that the more sincere reason I was here was to watch other horses die. It may seem grim or morbid, but it hardly compares to the deaths I have witnessed before: young racehorses with broken legs or hearts who explode midway and collapse in front of an audience in the name of sport.
Since I started working at the clinic, I have held the heads of horses while they were humanely euthanized. The horse's eyes and body are its complete language. I learned that when a horse is ready to die, whether due to old age or prolonged pain and illness, it accepts death and even welcomes it, just like humans. These deaths are usually calm, a “peaceful death.” The horse's soul is ready to leave.
Although sometimes the horse is not ready to die. A young, healthy horse can fight even with an overdose of bright pink barbiturates in its jugular vein. When their heart stops, they may stagger and fall back. Their heads are held high and ready to fly, their bodies tense with fear, and their eyes wide and wild before they fall to the ground, dead. Some track veterinarians administer a mild sedative before euthanasia, which confuses the mind and reduces the horse's ability to physically respond to what is happening to it. It is designed to relax the horse so that it accepts death with less effort. But this sedative is not intended to relieve pain, and it takes time for the effect to take effect, in fact a little longer than euthanasia itself. For a horse that is under extreme strain from running and is overcome with fear and pain, would more time spent standing on a broken leg be more humane, especially since sedation makes standing unreliable even for a horse with four healthy legs? When a screen of death rises around a doomed horse on a track, the public inquiry is called off. But the horse dies, whether we see it or not. There is no humanity in taking the life of an innocent horse for the sake of sport, so in the context of horse racing, the term “humane euthanasia” does not work.
None of this is to say that euthanasia is not an appropriate way to end an animal's suffering in many cases. But how the horse gets there and for what purpose matters. In racing, horses are not old or sick, and they have no influence over what happens to them. Their life – unlike Pancho's life, full of old age and peace – is just beginning. They would not have died if not for the misfortune of being raised and forced to run to him. In the world of auto racing, euthanasia is used widely as a business management tool. Insurance payments are built into the property settlement. The fact remains that no other equestrian sport recognized by civilized society leads to the death of young, healthy horses. horse racing is carried out at an obscene speed. In a sense, sport has hijacked the language of humane euthanasia to justify the unethical—an act of moral sleight of hand made necessary by an industry built on the exploitation of youth.
My heart will be broken the day I say goodbye to Pancho, and if we face humane euthanasia, in this huge decision I will make on his behalf, I will find peace in knowing that he knows I am doing this out of true love and compassion.
And believe me, they know.
