The story was really sad. The horse sure was depressed but the owner couldn’t figure it out. They brought in a very large, beautiful horse which, we could tell, had more years behind it than ahead of it. They loved the horse however and didn’t want to see it spend its final years suffering with equine depression.
They lived on a nice big farm with lots of space for the horses to run. For the life of a horse it really is an idyllic setting. This made the whole depression scenario all the more perplexing to comprehend. The horse was living on a proverbial retirement home for horses and it was suffering from equine depression? It didn’t make any sense.
I probed the owners a little by asking some important questions. They had an old silo on the farm, it turned out. The silo was alongside a path that led to the field where the kids like to ride the horses. When I asked what was in the silo the reason for the equine depression became clearer. The silo was being used as storage for animals that, for whatever reason, died on the farm. The horse would hesitate and then bolt past the silo and into the meadow, the owners explained, as the kids forced the big horse up to and past the silo. The kids would do this repeatedly as they loved the speed that the horse would reach.
They didn’t realize that the horse was running so fast because it was so scared. They really had no idea the horse was suffering abuse. When we explained that this was likely the reason for the equine depression they were horrified. They apologized profusely and offered to accommodate any lifestyle correction we would offer. After offering a few suggestions we spent a great deal of time and effort making corrections in the horse for animal depression using the therapies that we have here.
The outcome was very pleasing for both of us.
I am Ava Frick and I headed the animal depression answers website. Give it a click now.