It’s been a rough year!

It’s been a rough year.

 

If it feels like we've shared a lot of goodbye posts this year, you're right. With Judy's death this morning, we have lost 15 equines in 2026 - though one was in a long term foster home. Some had been part of Gentle Spirit for many years, while others had only just arrived. Some deaths came after long lives and declining health, while others completely blindsided us.

 

We know that seeing goodbye after goodbye can also raise questions about what's going on, so we thought it was worth talking about.

For several years, we've looked at our herd demographics and joked—not particularly happily—that eventually we were going to have a really bad year. We'd say things like, "We have eight horses over 30 and another ten over 25. At some point, we're going to lose a lot of them close together." We knew that year would eventually come; we just didn't know when.

 

Unfortunately, 2026 is turning out to be that year.

 

Gentle Spirit typically cares for around 60-70 horses at any given time, and a significant portion of our permanent sanctuary population is elderly or medically compromised. Of the 15 equines we've lost this year, more than half were 24 or older. Shanno was 39. Buddy was 37. Josie and Dex were 29, Judy was 28, Simba was 27, Beau was 25, and Marti was 24.

 

The younger losses tell very different stories. Three were babies purchased from auction with severely crippled legs, including at least one with fractures. After veterinary evaluation, it became clear there was no humane path forward. Misty came to us extremely ill and pregnant; her foal, Gale, was stillborn, and despite everything we tried, ultimately the only thing we could do for Misty was let her go. Other horses arrived with significant medical issues or experienced acute medical emergencies.

 

There isn't a single explanation connecting these deaths. There are 15 individual equines with 15 individual stories whose lives happened to end in the same year.

 

One of the difficult realities of rescue is that success doesn't always end in adoption. Sometimes it's giving an old horse a few more good years, keeping a chronically ill horse comfortable, or recognizing when medicine can't give them any more good days. We talk a lot about giving horses a safe place to land, but perhaps not enough about what that promise eventually requires of us. When you promise an old horse a home for the rest of their life, eventually you have to live through the end of that life, too.

 

That's especially true at Gentle Spirit right now. We still have a large senior population, including horses in their 30s, along with horses living with chronic and complicated medical conditions. Many of them are doing extremely well, but at those ages things can change quickly. A new symptom, unexplained weight loss, or an old medical condition that suddenly becomes harder to manage tells us something has changed.

 

We investigate those changes, adjust their care, involve our veterinary team when needed, and do what we can to help them rebound. Sometimes they do. Sometimes, despite everything, their bodies are simply reaching the end.

 

But loss isn't the whole story of Gentle Spirit in 2026. We've also celebrated 22 adoptions so far this year, with more in the works. Rescue means both things are happening at once. Horses are coming in, getting the care and training they need, and finding homes while others who have reached the ends of very long lives are leaving us. There have been a lot of really good days this year, too; sometimes the hard ones are simply louder.

 

And 2026 isn't over. We still have horses over 30. We still have medically compromised horses whose health can change quickly, and we're still a rescue. We still plan to go to auction, and we'll still take in horses who need us without always knowing exactly what problems they're bringing home with them or whether we'll be able to fix them.

 

So as much as we'd love to say we're done with goodbye posts for the year, we can't promise that. What we can promise is that we aren't going to stop doing the work because losing them is hard.

 

We'll keep taking the ones we can help, caring for the ones who need us, finding homes for the ones who are ready, and giving the old ones as many good days as we possibly can. And when there aren't any more good days to give, we'll be there for that day, too.

 

However, we really, really hope 2026 gives us a break