In what has already been an incredibly difficult year, we unexpectedly said goodbye to two more horses this past week.
First was Titus, the enormous Percheron who had been the longtime partner of our farrier, Amanda. For the past couple of years, Amanda had been struggling to keep weight on him despite repeated dental care, specialized feeding and, after he tested positive for EPM, multiple rounds of treatment. A few months ago, Titus came to GSH as a final home and one more attempt to see if things could turn things around.
We tried. We dramatically increased his feed, managed him closely and recently started another round of EPM treatment when we noticed more days when he seemed unsteady. There were days when we thought we were gaining ground, but the bigger picture told us we weren't. This week, Titus laid down and couldn't — or wouldn't — get back up. After fighting for him for so long, Amanda made the decision not to ask him to fight anymore. We helped him go peacefully.
And then there was Diamond - the horse in the photos.
Diamond's story didn't begin with us. After she arrived at GSH, we were able to piece together some of her past. She had been born and raised in Colorado, where she was reportedly very loved and maybe even a little spoiled. Eventually she was donated to a therapy program in Kansas. When a trainer determined she wasn't going to be a good fit as a therapy horse, she was sent to the Billings sale, purchased by a broker and, just a couple of weeks later, ended up at an auction in Corsica.
That's where her GSH story began.
She was easily the horse we were most worried about that day — extremely thin, very sick and with an injured eye. What followed were months of trying to figure out exactly what was happening inside Diamond's body. At times her illness looked like strangles. At other times she would simply stop eating and lose weight frighteningly fast, without many of the other symptoms we'd expect.
Eventually we had her guttural pouches scoped and flushed, which supported what we'd suspected: Diamond had likely experienced a severe case of strangles, with concern that the infection had spread internally. At that point, we had a very difficult conversation about euthanasia. We didn't know what damage had already been done or what her future might look like.
Ultimately, we decided that as long as Diamond remained symptom-free, our herd remained healthy and she could maintain a good quality of life, she deserved the opportunity to simply live.
And that's exactly what she did.
This summer was wonderfully, beautifully boring for Diamond. No new outbreaks. No dramatic weight loss. No mysterious illness. She gained weight, looked fantastic and spent her days simply being a horse in a place that expected absolutely nothing from her.
In fact, Diamond wasn't on our worry list at all. She was on our fall training list.
And then the day after we lost Titus, we went outside for morning chores and found her gone.
There was no evidence of a struggle. No disturbed ground or scattered hay beneath her. Nothing suggesting a prolonged colic or even the movement we often see when a horse suffers a catastrophic event. It appeared that one moment Diamond was standing there, and the next she simply wasn't.
We don't know why.
That has made this loss particularly difficult to process. There was no decision to make, no warning that allowed us to prepare ourselves and no final decline that told us her time was coming. We've struggled even with figuring out how to tell all of you, because we don't have an answer to give you.
What we do know is that Diamond's path toward slaughter ended at that auction in Corsica. She got well. She got fat. She got a summer with friends, grass, food and safety. She got months in which nobody asked her to perform, produce or prove that she deserved to be here.
We wish she'd gotten years.
And we also know there's an elephant in the room that deserves to be acknowledged.
We've lost a lot of horses this year.
We know it. We feel every single one of them. And when you follow these horses and love them alongside us, we know you feel it, too.
We regularly go back through the horses we've lost, their histories, their illnesses and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. There isn't one common thread or one unexplained illness sweeping through our herd. There is, however, a reality we've watched develop over the years: GSH has become home to a very old and medically complicated population of horses.
Right now, eight of our horses are over 30 years old. Another eight are over 25. Twenty-two more are between 20 and 24.
That means 38 horses in our care are over the age of 20.
Many came to us already carrying significant medical histories. We care for horses with chronic respiratory disease, Cushing's, previous EPM and lasting neurologic or mobility problems. We currently have two recent arrivals who are significantly underweight and receiving intensive nutritional support. We have another horse living with the long-term effects of EPM whose ability to comfortably manage another winter is something we're actively evaluating.
It is an old herd. It is a medically complicated herd. And loving horses like these means sometimes having an absolutely heartbreaking year.
We also know the year may not be finished asking this of us.
At any time, one of our seniors could tell us they're tired. A horse we've been carefully managing could suddenly decline. And age and medical history aren't prerequisites for tragedy — any horse, anywhere, can colic, suffer a catastrophic injury or simply die unexpectedly, just as Diamond did.
That's part of the reality of caring for horses, and it's one of the hardest realities of rescue.
But we're not going to stop telling you about them because the number has become uncomfortable.
We have always tried to be transparent about the horses who come through our gates — the good days, the recoveries, the ridiculous moments, the hard decisions and the losses. We're not going to quietly stop talking about a horse because we're afraid someone will think we've lost too many.
Every horse deserves to be remembered.
Whether they spent 20 years with us or 20 days, they mattered here. They mattered to the volunteers who fed them, the people who cared for them and the supporters who followed their stories from hundreds of miles away. And when they're gone, they deserve the same loving goodbye.
Thank you for loving these horses with us, even when loving them hurts.
And thank you for trusting us enough to share the difficult parts of rescue along with the beautiful ones. If you ever have questions about a horse, their care or the decisions we make, please ask. We will always do our best to answer honestly.
Rest easy, Titus. Send lots of love to Amanda, who loved him his entire life. We chose to not share his photo because let's be real - he was never ours. We just got to help take care of him for a bit.
And run fast in greener pastures, beautiful Diamond. While we suspect her main eternal pasture will be the one where her original people will one day find her, hopefully she'll pop into ours and say hi once in a while. She was a quiet part of our herd, but will be missed.