This is a sad post.

I feel like I should warn you of that ahead of time, in case you don’t want to read sad things right now. It’s totally fine if you don’t.

But it is a sad post. I dunno. I’m probably going to regret posting this in such detail.  The internet horse community is not known for its kindness. 

Oh, it’s known for its kindness to its horses.  It’s just not known for its kindness to each other, and while I try to be open and honest on this blog, there are some things that are just too sore for me to let strangers poke at.  

Not while it’s still so raw. 

I’m sure that someone out there is going to really disagree with the choice I made for Caspian. That’s the nature of horse owners – you give them anything, and they’ll argue over it. I’ll probably get some Anonymous post telling me I’m a horrible human being.

It’s just…. writing has always helped me process things, and I feel like I need to talk about it. Maybe my choice will help someone with their choice, in the same way that Aarene’s blog post helped me with my decision.

Maybe I’m just inventing reasons, and I just selfishly need to let this spill out of me before it tears me up too bad on the inside.

I put Caspian to sleep yesterday morning.




I did it out of kindness. 

I think.  

I don’t know. There’s just no magic 8 ball for things like this.  Maybe I chose wrong.  Maybe I just took a horse that only needed a quick surgery and a different medication to have pain-free decades left to him, years he could have spent grazing in the lower pasture I would finally fence in, swishing his tail in easy contentment.  Years where the boys crawled up on him and rode him around, and years when I rode him in the summer evening twilight in the field across the street. Years where Magpie and Finn sat up there with their legs sticking out sideways and encouraged him to shamble forward.

Or maybe he would have just had uveitis flare up after uveitis flare up, and migraine after migraine, as he slowly went blind. Maybe I just saved him from years of trying to hide pain before I finally gave in to the inevitable.

I don’t know.  I. Just. Don’t.  Know. 

I wish I did.

The internet is full of people who threw tens of thousands of dollars after their moonblind horses only to do the same thing I just did and put them to sleep, after years of pain.

The internet is also full of people who did simple eye removal surgeries and medicine changes and never had another issue. 


I kind of hate myself for not reading more about uveitis earlier. Maybe I could have avoided this path if I had. The bad eye just kind of came with Caspian. We were told it was an eye injury. I suspected different, but it never seemed to cause too much of problem, so I never looked into it any further. I didn’t realize *how* painful it was for him on his rare flareup days. I kept his fly mask on, and I kept him sheltered on windy days. Once I realized he actually had uveitis, and what that was (basically, like rheumatoid arthritis of the eyeball) I treated it more seriously and put atropine in his eye and used up my stores of banamine. He always got over the flares pretty quickly. Maybe if I’d done preventative stuff from the beginning, he never would have had another one. 

I don’t know, and it sucks. 

I wish I was independently wealthy, and I could have tried eye removal and surgical implants and every single herb and fancy cutting-edge technology available. Maybe I should have had more of a financial cushion, so that when we got hit with a bunch of vet bills in a row, it didn’t hurt us so dearly.  It didn’t help that every time the horse got sick the kids also got sick, so I had vet bills on one side and doctor bills on the other. We finally have amazing medical insurance, but even so it adds up fast when there’s 6 people in the family.

In my darkest moments, I think that maybe I shouldn’t have bought Reverie.  If I hadn’t bought her, my finances would be a lot better shape and I’d know for absolute certain that lack of money had no impact on my decision today. If I had a savings account, I’d *know* I did it out of kindness, instead of worrying that I justified a bad decision to myself.

It’s so hard to figure everything out, when it’s all tied up in grief, and sadness, and confusion about whether the road you chose was the right one.

If I’d had endless finances I could have thrown every drug known to man (horse?) at Caspian and made sure he was totally drugged-out and blissfully comfortable until early summer, and put him to sleep on a day when the sun warmed his back and the grass was up to his knees.  I know he would have liked that. 

If I’d been able to wait until summer I think I would have buried him on my property, too.  The problem is that right now it’s January, and the ground is so wet that it makes squishing, suctioning sounds against my boots even through the grass, even on dry days.  I could have hired someone to dig a hole in the lower pasture to bury him, but it would be a muddy, messy affair and the tractor would leave giant muddy tracks in the yard. 

It’s not the aesthetics that bother me. 

It’s the fact that for weeks and months afterwards I would have to stare out at those tracks, like scars across my heart, and I don’t think my wintertime depression could handle that. I didn’t want my backyard and barn area to become a daily reminder of a friend that I’ve lost. 

And ultimately, it does feel like I lost a friend. 

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it?  

I firmly, firmly believe in that whole “better a month early than a day too late” line.  I see so many videos of little ponies with dead eyeballs hobbling around on prosthetics, of people who keep little dogs alive until they’re covered in bedsores. I never want to be that person. 


But it’s one thing to say you believe in something.

And it’s a completely different thing to send that email to your vet, because you don’t trust your voice, while your horse trots around happily in turnout.

It’s another thing to call the renderer – the renderer – to make arrangements to pick up your friend’s body.  You know that’s what was left was not Caspian…. But still.

You have to go to the hardware store to get a tarp to cover him up after it’s done.  It’s not a good idea to try to have the vet come at the same time as the renderer  – it’s too sad when the schedules don’t line up, and you are stuck there waiting. Better to put the horse to sleep, cover them up, and then have the renderer come a little later. 

You sit there and hate the idea of a tarp.  It should be a shroud.  It should be maroon silk with gold filigree. It should something as beautiful as Caspian was on the outside, because nothing could really come close to how beautiful he was on the inside.

I mean, when will you find anything like him ever again? 

Maybe he wasn’t your once-in-a-lifetime heart horse, because he was too dignified to enjoy your hands-on affection in the stall, That didn’t make you love or appreciate how special he was any less. Heck, maybe it made you appreciate it more, because you weren’t blinded by anything. Where will you ever find a horse that moves like Arwen’s Andalusian, all fire and grace and smooth collected athleticism, but who is also kind enough to heave a deep sign and lower his muzzle inches from the ground so the kids can learn how to put on a halter?



You won’t.

Caspian was just good, through and through, like milk or vegetables. Steady. Dependable. Unflappable….and he looked like he was straight out of a magazine. Horses like that don’t exist in real life.

You mention the need for a tarp to your husband, trying to sound cool and collected.  He is drinking his coffee and doing something for work on his computer, so he buys your act and responds without looking up.

“Try to get something big enough that we can use it afterwards to cover the burn pile.”

You stare at him, wordless, motionless, and think that maybe, just maybe, you could kill him. You could, if you could move past the cold numbness in your heart long enough to feel hot rage.

Some primitive sense of self-preservation alerts him to your stare, and he looks up. 

“I know you’re not that good at comforting people, but you can do better than that.  You can do better than ‘get one big enough for the burn pile.’ “

He has the grace to look horrified at himself.  “I wasn’t thinking.  That was wrong.  I’m sorry.”

You nod, because that’s all you have left in you, and you leave the room.

You vacilate between wanting to avoid the barn at all costs, and wanting to live in there. Caspian makes it easy not to distance yourself, because suddenly, in his final few weeks on earth, he has turned into Houdini.  He breaks out of his stall with an alarming regularity, snapping chains on his gate, using his mouth to open horse-proof locks and untying multiple sets of halters you looped around as a last ditch effort. He roams the property at night.  He wanders into the feed area and eats a two month supply of LMF products….. a two month supply for all three horses. You replace it, and he breaks out and eats it again.

You replace it, and he eats it again.

At this point, he’s more vitamin than horse, and you have no idea how he hasn’t foundered or colicked.

You stop buying supplements, so the next time he gets out, he eats the hay.
Not some of the hay, but ALL of the hay.  You’ve been buying it a few bales at a time from the feed store because the ground got too muddy for a big supply delivery. He devours the entire bale and a half of alfalfa, and pees on the few remaining strands that are left. He upends every single trash can and food container to make sure he gets every last bite of food.

He spills out the last of the rice bran pellets, eats most of them, and then poops on the rest.

When you go out in the morning, he’s nibbling in contentment on the grass, and the other horses are looking at you with pricked ears.  “Breakfast?” they ask.

You stare at the empty destruction of the feed room, and shrug helplessly.  “I’ll stop and get food on my lunch.  I’m sorry.”

Caspian leads to his stall easily, ready for a nice big drink of water and a nap before breaking out again the next night.

You send your husband to Ace Hardware to get an actual lock, and he comes back with a metal carabiner combination lock.  You snap it shut over the metal chain at the top, twist the dials to make sure it is totally locked, lock the metal chain at the bottom, and grin at Caspian.  “Beat THAT,” you say.


The next morning you look out the window.  “The damned horse is out again,” you say to your husband.

“He can’t be.”

“Well, he is.”

“Did you forget to lock the stall?”

You give your husband a withering look. Dumb questions don’t require answers.  

When you go out there, you find the lock is in pieces in front of the stall.  Caspian literally chewed it off and then unhooked his chains and set himself free.

He also ate all the hay again.

His monthly feed bill for December is already well over $500.  He looks good, and his coat is shiny, so there is that.

His “good” eye also seems more and more weird. There’s nothing you can put your finger on, but it just seems…. off. Plus, his bad eye is so sensitive to light that it really should come out at this point.

You do more research.  And then more.  Some people have the eye enucleating done and that solves everything. 

But…. but there’s the way he flipped his head all over the place when the vet approached his good eye.  And the way he stepped on your foot. And the way he spooks at things in the sky more than he used to, and doesn’t quite focus on you, and all the other signs. 

And when the vet comes out and sedates him to look at it, there’s red inflammation…. In his *good* eye. It’s not definitive, but it’s there, and as close to knowing as you’re gonna get, short of a too expensive trip to an equine opthalmologist for a series of more invasive tests.

The vet recommends removing the bad eye at the very least. You’d already warned him that if it was in the “good” eye you would be considering euthanasia. He walks you through the entire process, step by step, in his calm, no frills voice. You’ve never had a vet you liked this much.

It helps. Sort of.

You hint around for a recommendation, but he’s vague. You can go the med route, or the euthanasia route. It doesn’t seem like he thinks either is a wrong choice. He does repeat that uveitis is a painful condition, and that Caspian would feel better with the bad eye out.

You start haunting horse uveitis orums, reading up on what worked, and what didn’t. You start reading veterinary medical studies. One figure said it only goes bilateral 20% of the time. One study of an experimental trial had 96% of the horses ending up with it in both eyes.

The people on the internet seem to end up closer to the 96% than the 20%.

You take pictures in the sunlight, and realize he’s squinting…. On both sides.  You think. Maybe you’re imagining it?

You’re not imagining it.

You can’t do it. You can’t put him through painful surgeries and adapting to only having one eye, just to have to face the same decision in a few weeks or months or at best, years.

Besides, if you can visibly see Mr. Stoic squinting, how bad must the pain actually be?

Still, you hold off, until you see a picture you happen to take. In the picture his leg is held crooked to the side, bandaged from his recent bout of cellulitis, and his head is lowered. He’s squinting, and he just…. he looks like a horse in a lot of pain. He looks tired.

You make the appointment by email, because what choice do you have?  Who can trust their voice with a phone call like that?  “I’ve decided to kill my friend before he starts hurting nonstop, because I don’t think that any amount of money I dump into this will end up with any different ending, so why not do it now, while he’s fat and happy and not in too much pain? 

The internet is full of “the horse will tell you” cliches. You don’t think that applies to you. You know in your heart that for Caspian, who is a stoic, that if you’re waiting until he “tells you”, you’ve waited too long.  If you wait for him to tell you, to let you know he’s ready to die, it’s because he’s been in pain so long that he’s given up on the inside.

You don’t want his dying to be a painful thing that takes forever.  You can’t make this better for him, but you can at least do that.  It’s a gift he deserves.

You still have to go to Ace Hardware for that stupid tarp.  You’ve been putting it off, but the vet is coming tomorrow. You have to wander those beige aisles with the too-quiet beige linoleum tile, and you have to look at the selection of tarps.  Nobody every teaches you these things – how big of one do you get?  You’ve never been very good at eyeballing things. Eyeballing distances is how you ended up with a barn on one side of your property and a paddock on the other. You thought it was 2-3 inches of slope to put the barn on the right hand side. It turns out it was a 7 foot retaining wall worth of slope. So, eyeballing won’t work.

Do you guess at it, and have legs sticking out because you were wrong?  What’s the alternative? Can your heart handle going home and taking a tape measure to your living, breathing, soft-furred, warm-hided friend as he calmly munches his hay, measuring him for his temporary plastic coffin cover, and then coming back to the store?

You eyeball the prices and are a little horrified.  Who knew tarps were so expensive?  Do you get one big one, or two small ones?

You do the math, and realize maybe your husband wasn’t being such an ass after all.  If you’re going to drop $40 or $50 on a piece of reusable plastic, maybe you should get one big enough to cover the burn pile after all.

You buy it, and try not to meet the cashier’s eyes, lest she ask you about your project. When you get home, you leave it in the back seat of the car. You can’t stand to look at it.

The boys are leaving to their grandparents early in the morning, hours before the vet is due to arrive. You drag them out to clean stalls with you, and break the news you’ve been putting off. You tell them that it’s in both eyes, and that you will have to put him down while they’re gone. You don’t mention that you’ve already set the time and date. It’s hard enough for you to live with. You can spare them that at least.

You have a long conversation with them, and they take it surprisingly well. They are not surprised, because you’ve hinted it’s coming in the past. Kids hear more than you think.  They’re sad, but they understand. 

“I wish we could have one more ride on him,” one of them says.

“Yeah,” says the other one, quietly.

“Me too,” you say, and try to not let your voice get too choked up.

You don’t want to lie to them and pretend it’s a happy thing, but you know if you break down, they’ll break down. Crying is perfectly acceptable, but you want them to do it on their own, not because they’re unnerved by you.

You discuss pets in heaven, and the idea of heaven in general.

You claim first ride in heaven on Caspian. It’s probably not a biblical concept, and besides…. if there’s a heaven for horses, it probably doesn’t involve being ridden, but you claim it, just in case.

It makes it feel less like goodbye, and more like “see you soon”.

Eventually the stall is as clean as it’s gonna get. You give him three bags of shavings to roll in. You clean out his dinner-plate size hooves one last time. That front right is getting thrushy – you should grab the medicine and…

You put the hoof back down. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

You and the boys feed Caspian a stupid amount of food, and turn out the lights as he quietly chews.

You go to bed, but you don’t sleep. You buy a new book and read it until you get drowsy, and turn off the lights, but the second you do, reality comes crashing back. You start doing the math of how many hours until the vet comes. You try to ignore it, and think of anything else, but it doesn’t work. You start to cry, and instead put your glasses back on and turn on your Kindle and fall back into the book to keep the tears at bay.

It helps it’s a good story.

You repeat this several times throughout the night.

The boys leave with their grandparents early, and as soon as they’re gone, it becomes real.

You want to be out there with Caspian, but he’s still happy in his stall, knee-deep in hay, nose to nose with Reverie, and you shouldn’t make yourself feel better at his expense. Horses are kind of empaths, and the last thing he needs is to have you bringing him down with your mood those last few hours.

You think about turning him out, and letting him roll in the mud like he likes…. but decide against it. Maybe it’s what he would like, but there won’t be time for him to dry off and get groomed again. It shouldn’t matter, maybe it doesn’t matter, but leading a mud-caked horse out would just make you feel so much worse.

You do everything to make time slow down, but it won’t. Eventually it’s a little over an hour to the vet. It’s time to go outside.

You glance at the screen door and note the way the sun is making the frost glow in the backyard. It’s a beautiful day. Is that better, or worse?

Better, you decide. Caspian never liked the rain. Better for him to enjoy the sun one last time.

You open up the back door and Carrots nickers at you, prompting Reverie and Caspian to come to the front gate. You stop, and take a picture, realizing it’s the last time you’ll see those pricked white ears looking at you from his stall.

You take another, and another. And another.

You stop. Why are you torturing yourself like this? Caspian doesn’t need you sobbing. Who knows what he’ll pick up off of you, if you can’t get your emotions under control.

The Bean had offered to hold him for the vet, but you turned him down. Maybe it would have been the kind thing to do for Caspian, not having your emotions leaking all over him. The Bean would have been calmer….but you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t not be there.

Your breath catches in a sob, so you stand by Carrots and take a deep breath. One. Two. You fall back on your old trick and start mentally naming things as your glance falls on them. Chestnut. Forelock. Grass. Sky. Mist. Hoof. Tree.

That calms you down enough that you can conjugate Spanish verbs in your head. Yo corro. Tu corres. Ud. corre. Nosotros corremos. Uds. corren.

Deseo. Deseas. Desea. Deseamos. Desean.

Emotions stuffed back down, you approach the barn and clean the stalls.

You tie up Caspian as you lead Carrots over to his stall. Her stall? His stall.

From the tie post he squints at you in the sunlight, even though he’s not in the middle of a flare. You wonder if it’s your imagination that he’s squinting with the good eye. You zoom in one photo and realize it’s not.

Maybe the sunlight was a gift, to make the whole thing easier, to prove you’re doing right. No prey animal who is based on flight should have to spend the rest of their life squinting painfully every time they’re out of the barn.

Still. He looks so good. Would it be easier if he looked sicker? You can’t help but think that it would be easier.

Carrots ignores Reverie and settles in to eating, which is a relief. You were pretty sure she was over her hatred of the filly, but this is the first time they’ve been penned next to each other. You’re glad it’s going smoothly. In another day or so, they’ll be best friends. You scatter sweet feed on the floor to keep the girls busy, and fill an entire bucket with grain for Caspian. It’s not like he’ll founder.

You lead him away from the barn, stopping near the electric fence to let him eat You want to move him away gradually, so Reverie doesn’t start screaming for him. You want to give her a chance to get used to him being far away.

Caspian eyes the bucket, flapping his lip at it the entire way, but he waits respectfully until you give him the signal before he lowers and dives in. He’s such a good boy, through and through.

He looks good, too. How can such a young, healthy-looking horse be irretrievably sick? It seems so unfair.

You take some pictures, so you can remember him like this, nose deep in the bucket, content, moments before he’s gone.

This is your gift to him, even if it’s tearing you apart. He’s worth it.

He’s shining in the sunlight, which makes you feel proud. It’s hard to get a shine on a grey horse. He always has the most beautiful shine.




Had the most beautiful shine?

His neck looks good with the roached mane. You had such grand plans for it – you were going to shape it as it grew out, but instead it’s just kind of lumpy, since you used scissors.

Still – his mane was never very good even when you completely babied it, and he really rocks the roached look.  It shows his neck off to its best advantage. You’ll probably never own a horse with a prettier neck.

It’s 20 minutes to the vet’s arrival.

You unhook the gate and lead him through to the front yard. Reverie calls a couple of times, pacing her stall. It’s not as frantic as it would be without Carrots beside her, but it still makes your heart wrench.

You lead him to where the vet suggested it take place, near the driveway and where the ground is level, and let him eat some more. You want him totally relaxed in that area before the vet arrives. You’re trying not to cry, but it’s hard, really hard. You bury his face in his broad side, hiding your head there, breathing in his scent. He’s so warm, and solid. Your breath hitches. Maybe this is a really bad idea. Maybe this isn’t the right decision at all.

The Bean comes out, face looking quiet and sad. “You need anything?”

You swallow, hard, so your voice comes out only half choked. “Can you get the … the tarp….ready…”

“I’ll take care of it.” You know he will. You can tell he wants to do something to comfort you, but that he’s giving you space to just be with Caspian alone. His ability to give you space has always been your favorite part of your marriage. The tarp is one less thing for you to worry about right now, and it will also give him something to do.

Caspian has eaten half the bucket of grain and gotten bored with it, so he moves on to the grass. He’s eating it with a steady determination, barely chewing, as if he’s half starved. You run a hand down his side, where there’s not a rib to be felt, and give a choked laugh. Your feed bill is going to be less than half of what it used to be, once he’s gone.

You feel guilty for even thinking that.

Behind you, you hear the crunching sound of the vet’s truck pulling into the driveway. You glance to confirm it’s who you think it is, and everything rears up inside you, angry and ugly and savage. You turn your back on him, and curl your fingers into Caspian’s coat.

Go away. Go away, go away, go away, go away.

Instead, you wait till you hear truck door open and then close, and then you turn around and give the vet a half-hearted wave before giving him your back again. You don’t think he minds. After a few moments, you find your voice.

“Hey, Doc.” It comes out pinched, and way too high.

“Hi, Becky. You want to do the paperwork first?”

No. Go away. “Yeah.”

He heads back to his truck, and you realize you can’t. You just can’t. Thank God the Bean is here. “Bean, you can do that part,” you say, and he obediently walks over to join the vet at the truck. The two of them talk in quiet voices. You hear snippets of it – the vet’s explaining the process to the Bean, just like he did to you. He has such a kind, steady voice. It helps, but you still try to block it out. Go away.  Go away,  go away,  go away.

You lean your face into Caspian’s hide and conjugate verbs like your life depends on it. Correr. Brinkar. Nadar. Morir. No, not that one. Not that one, Becky. It’s not helping. Cantar. Ir. Esperar. You glance down, and see that Caspian is back in the bucket of food, but now he’s eating with a worried expression.


Well, it is what it is. You’re doing the best you can.

The vet comes over, and explains the steps to you again. You nod, and look off in the distance, at the sky, the hills, the trees. He talks you through ways it might not go smoothly. Your fingers are buried in Caspian’s coat. You keep wiping your nose on your sleeve, or shoulder. It’s probably gross, but it’s a Carhartt. Carhartts are ranchers jackets. They usually see worse. So do vets and husbands. You don’t think they mind.

You hold the halter while the vet gives him the sedative.

“Just hold his head. He’s going to get nice and sleepy. Go ahead and let him get nice and calm.”

Caspian stops chewing his mouthful of grass long enough to brace himself for the shot, and then continues.

He chews it steadily, and then his head gets heavy. He chews it again. Once. Twice. He stops, his eyes half-lidded, his breathing deep. The grass hangs forgotten in his mouth.

The vet approaches again and shaves the neck area, and then circles back to the truck for the meds. He’s already explained the next part. Caspian’s a big boy, so he’s going to give him three full syringes of the juice. It’s a big needle, so he might startle when it goes in.

Your job is to hold Caspian’s head, hold him steady, as the three syringes go in. Once they’re in, the vet will grab his halter, and help ease him to the ground.

You nod. Your fingers are curled around the halter, fingertips buried in the soft fuzz of Caspian’s cheeks. At some point you realize your hands are shaking. You glance down, and see the three giant syringes in the vet’s hand. They’re pink – horribly pink, like the way poisonous things in nature advertise themselves with too-bright colors. They’re warning pink. Danger pink. You’ve seen the pink juice before, when you had to put your dog down, but those giant horse-sized cannisters are too much.

It seems really, really wrong to hold Caspian still for those, when he looks so good in the winter sunlight. There’s still time to say nevermind. You can still back out. You can still stop this idiocy.

Instead, you lift your good friend’s head up, cradling it high.

“Good”, says the vet in his quiet voice. “Okay. We’re going to start.” He inserts the needle, and blood drips out the bottom. He screws in the first syringe, and Caspian’s blood mixes with the godawful pink like smoke.

Your fingers are shaking, as are your arms. It’s not from the strain of holding him up. It doesn’t matter at this point – he’s sedated, so you let yourself feel. The tears run down your cheeks.

One syringe.

Two syringes.

Three syringes.

By the time the third syringe is nearly through, Caspian’s head has grown heavy, and he’s starting to wobble. “I got him,” says the vet, and you back away, grateful. The Bean comes up behind you, and his hand is on your shoulder, squeezing it.

The vet leans hard against Caspian’s head, and pushes him to an almost sitting position, and then helps him down. For a moment, one of those dinner plate sized hooves catches on the grass, and Caspian’s graceful descent is arrested. The vet tries to nudge it with his leg without letting go of Caspian’s head, but it’s hard. He’s no 800 pound Arabian.

“Do you need…. Do you want me to…” You raise a shaking hand to gesture, then cross it in front of you again, gripping at the sleeves of your jacket.

“I got it,” he says, and he does. Caspian is down on his side, stretched out like he’s deep asleep. It could be a nap, except his breathing is too shallow, and spaced too far apart.

You’d been warned there might be paddling, but there isn’t any. He’s just lying down. Sleeping. Except he’s not.

“You can go to his head now,” the vet says. “Just go to his head and give him some love. I’ll get my stethescope.”

For a second, you think about saying no. You don’t want to. What the hell are you supposed to say? “Good boy. Sorry for killing you. Thanks for not making this too traumatic on me, now please go to the light faster so I don’t have to hear the irregular sounds of your final breaths?“

But you go to him, and you kneel down, feeling lost, and stupid, and guilty. You have no idea where to put your hand, so you just place it lightly on the center of his forehead, where he liked being soothed the best. “Good boy. Good boy, Caspian. You’re so good. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. Good boy.” You break off into a sob, and then realize that maybe, maybe Caspian can actually still hear you, maybe he’s not quite gone, and if he can, maybe he shouldn’t hear your keening as his final sounds. That’s not a peaceful sound. Maybe it will scare him. You can hold it together for a few more moments.

“You’re the best boy. Good boy. Shhhh, shhhh. Yes. Good boy. You are the best, and there’s nobody better. I’m sorry. You are so good.” Your voice comes out almost calm, almost soothing, although you don’t know how you’re managing it.

His breaths are gone now, and lips pulled back from his teeth. Steam rises from his mouth, but it’s from his heat, not his breath. His eyes are glassy. He gives a cough, like the vet warned he would. Once. Twice. Three times.

The vet is kneeling on the other side of that sloping rib cage. “There’s no heartbeat.”

“Good boy,” you say, and you run a hand over his long, furry ear. He hated that in real life, but what does it matter now?

The vet helps you get his halter off. You’re going to donate it to a nearby horse rescue. He asks if you want to save some of his tail, and you lie and say you already did.

The truth is that you don’t want the responsibility of it, or the memory. You’re scared that all you’ll see of it is his death, and how you should have been able to help him, but you couldn’t.

He deserved to be 33, not 13. What a stupid disease. What a stupid end for such a good, good horse.

The tarp you got is ridiculously huge, and it takes the three of you to get it right.

The vet gives you a hug as he leaves, but you suck at hugs in the best of times, so it’s a quick, awkward thing. You can’t decide if you want to fling yourself on the nearest person and sob into them or whether your skin is twitching at the intrusion of being touched.

The Bean has his hand on your shoulder again, as awkward at comforting as you are receiving it, and it makes you feel oddly better.

“I’m sorry, Becky. I’m really sorry,” he says, and when he does his voice has tears in it. You don’t know why, but it feels like a gift, and that helps too.

The vet backs his truck out of the driveway, and you sink on the stairs and hold your head and sob. It’s easier, now that it’s over, but it’s still so stupid, and just so useless. Why do we even have horses, if it has to end with impossible decisions like this?

That last night in the stall, as you picked through the shavings, one of your boys looked up at you and said in a quiet voice, “If we were rich… like, if we had a million dollars, could we save Caspian?”

“No,” you reply simply, and it’s the truth. The horse uveitis groups are filled with eye surgeries and implants, but you just don’t think it would have worked for Caspian.

You wanted to do right by Caspian, and spare him unnecessary pain, and you did that. It was quick, and oddly peaceful. Even the vet commented on it. He wasn’t hurting. He wasn’t scared. His friends were right there. Reverie was calling for him, and he felt so at ease with everything that he didn’t even bother calling back. He still had unchewed fresh green grass in his mouth when he went, and he didn’t fight it. He really did just go to sleep, with the sun on his back and a half-finished bucket of grain to his side, and expecting to go back to his stall at the end of another routine vet visit.

And that was the best gift you could give him, but you’re surprised to find that it doesn’t make you feel any better at all. Your brain can mutter all the cliches it wants, but it doesn’t make your heart hurt any less.

Because your friend is there, under a tarp in your yard, and it just really, really sucks.