Yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from a friend and former co-worker who was in tears because she had just been told that Charlie, the beloved 30-ish gelding belonging to the therapeutic riding program I used to work at, was being put down on Friday. Charlie has non-consensually devoted 12 years of his life to the program, and is a much loved icon, but because his back and joints had become too weak and arthritic to carry people any longer, the camp director was pressuring the staff to “put him down”. The staff - new and admittedly having a “cowgirl mentality” - agreed, even though the program director (a 20 year old girl) told us that she didn’t believe it was the right choice. Another former staff member had also stopped by and said it was criminal to euthanize the old man, but agreed that the program simply couldn’t afford to keep him any longer and that it should just be done and gotten over with.

So Charlie was scheduled to be killed this Friday, despite being healthy (for 30 years old, anyway) and as far as anyone could tell, happy.

No efforts were made to repair or halt the damage to his joints, which would have enabled him to continue his life with the program and prevent his aches from worsening. He was given pain relief when necessary, but even the cheapest treatment that could have halted the progress of his deterioration was denied.

He lived and worked in this place for 12 years.

After about two hours of frantic phone calls (to the vet, the camp director, the barn where my horse lives, someone to trailer him, and each other) my two friends and I had secured Charlie’s adoption release and scheduled a time to pick him up. Tomorrow morning he will leave the place that has been his home for the past decade and move 20 miles away, to the other side of the Salt Lake valley, where he will share a nice flat paddock with Rivet (my horse) and Rivet’s unnamed friend - another elderly gelding.

When we went to check on him today and discuss his pick up, the new staff expressed some surprise that we were willing to put the time, energy and resources into moving and keeping a horse who may only have a few more months left to live, and who cannot be ridden or “used” in any way. As much as she didn’t want Charlie to be killed, she had apparently gotten used to the idea that the old man was as good as dead, and absolved herself of any complicity in a death that he is not ready to die and for the first time I felt the full weight of the schism between me and a few select other individuals, and the vast majority of those people who claim to adore horses. No horse should have to die an early death simply because the place that used him as slave labor for 12 years no longer has a use for him.

There are some days when I wonder what the point of working and fighting to save, protect and defend non-human animals is. The weights been growing heavier lately, especially after my failure to rescue the 25 “lab” rats from my former school. This morning I caught myself wondering if it was worth it to save such an old horse, who has surely already lived the best days of his life, when there are so many, many other horses and other animals who are equally deserving of a home. When the girl in charge of the lives of these horses told us that she had given up on sparing Charlie, I realized no one should be willing to stop fighting for the lives of anyone they love, no matter how hard it gets, because once in a while, if you’re lucky, you do get to save a life. And even one life counts.