Holistic Horseworks Talks with April Love

Knowing When to Let Go of Your Pet

April Love

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There will come a day when it's time to let go of your horse, dog, or other pet.

So, how can you decide when it is time to let them go? Sometimes animals stay for their humans, even if their body is causing great suffering. 

In this episode, April talks about how to make the transition easy for both the humans and the animals.


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00:00:29

Hi, this is Lillian and I'm here with April Love. On a sad subject, several of my friends have had to put their horses down recently. How can you tell when it's time to let them go?

00:00:42

So, it's a good question. We just did all three levels in Vacaville, CA and there were a horse, almost about 30.

00:00:51

And one of my students was really empathic, and she was just crying as she was working on the horse, and she was asking the barn owner what's going on. And oh yeah, I took him back because I just always guarantee to take any horse I sell back, and he's just kind of going downhill and he's not going to make it.

00:01:11

Deep systemic infection and lots of problems with his teeth and

00:01:17

just a whole bunch and she says I'm just waiting for him to tell me when he wants to go and we kind of did a little emotional session with him. And what came up and even with the other students, once you start listening to the horse, he just really wanted to be appreciated.

00:01:37

He wanted to be reincarnated. He wanted to come back to this farm.

00:01:42

He loved this woman and stuff, but his body was so uncomfortable, and we could only do so much in my classes, but definitely before winter, you know, hits in so usually most people want to give them, you know, a nice summer try and keep them comfortable but not have an old horse that's hurting and can't move around in winter.

00:02:04

So, we had decided for this horse to kind of give him a party. She has lazy dazy kids, horses, so they were going to have a big party and bathe them and do all these things like a going away party for him. So, all the kids could say how much they appreciated him and stuff like that. And it made all of my students

00:02:26

cry. Sorry, it still makes me cry.

00:02:30

So, it's just nice to kind of get quiet with the horse.

00:02:34

I had an older dog and

00:02:36

I would just

00:02:36

Keep saying, you know, and tell me when it's.

00:02:39

Time to go.

00:02:41

And when she said it was finally time to go, then I had her euthanized in a nice way, out by the swimming pool and waterfall and Zen music playing. So, it's always nice to invite anyone that might know the horse and make a special day for him.

00:03:00

And then when you say goodbye so but definitely don't make them suffer through the winter. Sorry, you could tell. I still get emotional about it. So, it's just really nice to do. They just want to be appreciated.

00:03:15

And a lot of times they're hanging around for the people because the people can't let them go. You know, the person is going to be so sad.

00:03:24

So, then the horse or the dog is staying on just for the person, even though they're just sleeping all day and can barely move around. So sometimes we have

00:03:33

to let go of

00:03:35

what we want and how lonely we will be without them and just pick a good weather day and, you know, make it a nice special grooming special day. And I just have the that come out and the first shot is usually to get them out of pain and put them into like a surgery sleep so.

00:03:59

And then the next shot is usually the one.

00:04:01

That stops their heart.

00:04:04

So, I don't like taking a dog into the vet to do that. I don't think that that's very nice. I know some people don't have an option with they can't put their horse down on their farm, so it's just, you know, working around all of that. What's a good situation to do this in when the owner is grieving?

00:04:25

They feel good about what they did, and you know what they did for their horse and letting the horse go and keeping a good memory of their horse.

00:04:35

So, you just have to kind of sometimes ask for help from your neighbors, friends, and people that knew the horse. How can we make this the best situation possible to say goodbye?

00:04:46

And just make sure that we're thinking about them and not ourselves.

00:04:52

So, this is April with holistichorseworks.com and you can find YouTube videos at Holistic Horse Works on YouTube.