Knowing When to Let Go: Owners, Vets, and Pain in Aging Horses

Welcome to Conversations in Equine Science. I'm Nancy McClain and I'm joined by Kate Acton.

And this is the podcast where we take equine research and try to make it accessible for horse owners and enthusiasts alike. Remember that with each topic we discuss, it is important to get professional advice before implementing any of the research strategies. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Conversations in Equine Science.

Kate and I are together today and we're doing a paper that is on owners', everyday interactions with their horse and how pain-related issues and those of veterinary concern are really affected. So it's Smith et al. and it's a of 2025 paper. It was just published in September. So what led me to pick this paper and welcome Kate. I'm so glad you could join in today. It's good to get back together again.

Thanks, Nancy. It's so nice to catch up. And what made me pick this paper was I had to put my horse down, pretty Greta. She would have been 29 in January. And I realized that day how important my relationship with my veterinary professionals were. Because when I could see she was getting a little weaker, I didn't want her to get worse. And with winter coming on, and I kind of made the decision last, you know, that day.

It just, things struck me that, you know, would be doing her the greatest kindness to go ahead and do it on a good day and a beautiful day. The sun was shining and we were able to put her down with her friends out in the pasture. But I thought, you know, if I wouldn't have that relationship to be able to call and discuss it with my vet, I mean, a lot of times you would have had to maybe book it like maybe four weeks later.

So this paper caught my attention because it talks about mainly pain-related issues and how it's so important to have that level of communication with your vet that you can discuss things and kind of hash things over because every situation is a little bit different. So, Kate, you're in the veterinary field. What did you think about this paper?

I thought this was absolutely brilliant because throughout the paper they have quotes directly from owners and I always love when you get that person's kind of first-hand experience or opinion in it. And when you suggested this paper, Nancy, I thought...

This is a great topic because for me, I always try and tell students when they're training to be vets and to be veterinary nurses how important it is to build trust with clients from our side and to make clients feel like they can come to you with the stupid questions. I really feel like that's a big part because I think owners can be afraid to reach out in case they're exaggerating it or it seems worse to them or maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe they'll come out and see the horse and tell me, like, you know, I don't need to have the horse treated or it's that worry about not being right. So I think it's just so important that conversations are kept open between both sides and people feel supported. And then reading through it, you know, I did think about Greta, like you'd said. And again, I'm so sorry to hear about pretty Greta. And it really did sound like the last kindness you can give her.

And the way she went, I mean, you know, it's the way I would want to go in a field surrounded by horses and exactly how you're loved. Yeah, you know, she was a great horse. And I think one person said, what was the greatest thing about her? I mean, you know, she was not of the bloodline that if she would have been a good broodmare. And the best thing was when I was going through my licensures on the track, whether it was groom license or exercise rider.

She always made me look so good when I really wasn't. So that was her thing. I mean, you would start to maybe lean to the right and her body would come under you.

So she was just, you know, one of those special horses that you're fortunate if you have one your entire life but you know you can have multiple ones it's an awesome experience and what a legacy for you know you were telling me before that she's seen through so many milestones in your life and you know it was the first ride for some of your grandkids and it's just an incredible thing that we have the privilege of getting to share any

time with them But to have so many years that she's seen you through all the good and bad times, it's just a very special bond. And, you know, it's a really just such a privilege, I suppose. She was kind of a celebrity in our family. So but, you know, when they get a little weaker, you see, you know, maybe they're not being as reactive. like one thing that really tipped me off and then we can get back to the paper is.

A fan got stuck in the stall across from her and the other horses were out and I was just gonna you know put a saddle on her and I always made her feel like she still had a job and that fan got stuck and it made a screeching noise and she did not react and that went that happened the day before I put her down and that started me thinking. Okay, that tells me a lot right there because normally she would have practically, I would have had to peel her off the ceiling with a spatula.

She was all redhead and there was not really a reaction that told me. That fiery terrible. Yeah. And I, that's happened the day before and I thought I'm really going to have to start assessing whether I can put her out in the snow on ice. I mean, you know, you start thinking what's the best scenario here. And I will say her final day that herd surrounded her and she led them out to the furthest part of the pasture.

And in previous days, she always started the walk out, but they passed her and she wouldn't catch up to them. But that final day, they were, the other horses were very respectful and they did not pass her. They let her lead them out. And I, you know, that kind of let me know, maybe this is it. Maybe I need to think today's the day, Let her go out a leader, you know. So anyway, this paper, it's kind of why I picked it because I think to myself, oh, my God, sometimes...

We don't have that open communication with the veterinary professionals. And Kate, I'm so glad you come from the other side. You know, I come from more of an owner and I treasured the fact that I could make a phone call and they came right out.

You know, it's just so important to maintain those relationships yeah and I think you touched on something there as well Nancy that really came through from the paper and it's how well you knew Greta like and owners mentioned that in the comments they made throughout the paper like I knew that was my horse I knew they were like this I knew they weren't like that it's that knowing of them to know when those subtle signs come in because they

do hide a big part of when they're struggling and suffering.

So at the point that we see it, there can often be even more that's going on underneath. So I think it's a wonderful thing that you were able to see those signs and give her that dignified goodbye. Yeah, and I like the comments the owners made because I think the one said, I knew she was in pain because her head was hanging so low and she looks so sad. Yeah. Sometimes that vertebral back pain, it does hurt for them to walk with their head in a normal position. So you'll see it always remain low.

And I remember when we did the physiological therapy exercise, podcast. And this has been a few years now, Kate. But the one lady noticed her horse always seemed to be walking with her nose to the ground. And, you know, those little things that you see a change in positioning. Like for me, she didn't react to that loud noise. I reacted more than her. And, you know, I just felt like that's what started me thinking we got to do this.

So it's always better on a good day than a bad day yeah always trying to get the last good day for them yeah yeah and then the one lady she said that she doesn't even like giving her kids medicine let alone her horses that just really cracked me up.

She goes yeah she says i don't even take medicine but with her horse whose name was star i can see when i can stop so she makes like that she doesn't approve of drugs and pharmaceuticals but when it's prescribed she looks at the end date when she can stop giving it and i think there's a lot of people that as our horse's age, the horses never get a holiday from their pain meds because of arthritis and all that. And yeah, could I have probably upped Greta's arthritis medication?

Yeah, but at 29 years old. Yeah. You know, I think you really hit the nail on the head when you said, I need to think about the future. You know, what is winter going to look like for her? And to what end will increasing the meds if she's going to slip on the ice every time she goes out? You know, it's I think it was really just something that is very hard for people to do in those situations. So I really commend you that you were able to think it's not just about today

and it's not about upping her meds today. So tomorrow's better. It's where are we going? And you'd mentioned to me previously, and I thought it was a great point to bring up in the podcast about having a plan when you've an older horse and having something in place that you know what to do. Because you don't know, you know, it's not always that you're going to know they're going downhill. Sometimes you do just come out to the field or the stable and they've gone down. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I like the comments that the veterinarians made in this paper, too, because that one Dr. Mark from Practice C, he said, if we can find out what is causing that pain and stop it, then, you know, that ends up being the better welfare for the horse. But in Greta's case, there was no really stopping it, you know. I mean, what would the winter bring? Colder joints. You know, arthritis hurts more in the extreme cold and in the dampness. And look how we feel, you know.

So, you know, I really chose to celebrate her life rather than be sad over it. Because, oh, my God, if you would have told me that I was going to have this horse almost 29 years, I would have been ecstatic back when she was a two-year-old, you know. So, but anyway, I like the way the vets talk about their reasons for medicating as well. So this paper, I really like the way it pulled owners and their thoughts and

then the veterinary professionals and their thoughts. and I thought it really gelled it very nice. Yeah. So the paper, I suppose, in a nutshell, was drawing upon how you were saying both veterinary and owner perceptions, but they actually looked at 200 hours of observation within four veterinary practices in the UK, which I just thought was an amazing amount of time and data to collect.

And they also then did interviews with horse owners and horse carers. And they found that owners' understanding of pain-related issues in their horses were based upon knowledge of what was normal for their animal and any deviation from this norm. So, again, like having that relationship and that understanding of the individual animal and not kind of treating them with one blanket rule, which I think we've come back to in a number of our episodes, you know, looking at that horse individually.

Yeah. And so many, oh my gosh, all of my horses have all been so different. And, you know, I think the main thing is if you're an owner or maybe you don't take care of your own horse, it's important the care team. Gets to know what's normal for that horse as well. And so for me, I've been fortunate. I've been the caregiver and the owner and the rider. And so you really get all of the dynamics of horse relationship when you do that.

And I think a lot of people who are really into horses and it's their passion, that's what they do is that's part of the journey is hooking up and getting to know each individual horse and what's normal for them. And I think it's with any animal, Kate. I think dogs and cats, it's the same. You know, it's just dogs and cats live with you, you know, and horses you have to, you know, they live in a different environment.

But I really thought that was the, as you said, the crutch of this whole study is it's the horse-human relationship. And then you're able to call your vet and be able to talk about what they think. And some of the people, euthanasia was their choice after having talked it through with the vet. So I will put a link to this because it is open access. And I don't have anything else. Kate, did you have anything you wanted to point out?

Yeah, I just had another, I suppose another point on when I was talking about the relationship from the vet side and to keep communication open, because you mentioned welfare. And to me, like, I suppose my background is obviously nursing, but I did.

Practice management and I was a head nurse as well so the people side came into it a lot with the team I worked with but then I would have had a lot of client communications because in practice management you get the good and the bad and you have to deal with the complaints and things like that and the like vast majority of the time like 95% of the time it's miscommunication that leads to break down in relationships.

But I always try and tell students that if you can just approach people with compassion and understanding, and when you don't understand, ask them to elaborate in, you know. Again, compassionate ways to try and just help draw out more information and get the bigger picture and know that the owner who's speaking to you is the one that cares. The owners that don't care aren't calling. They're not bringing their animals in. They're not trying to get help for them.

So you've got a person who's already come to you because they care. And for various reasons and how we communicate as people, we might not always get that across. And when we're stressed, sometimes it can come across that we're more stoic or we might come across as angry because we're stressed for our pet and, you know, our horse or our dog or our cat or whoever it may be.

But if you don't have compassion with people I think that's where we really see it impact welfare and people don't always link that together but if you make owners feel like they're not being heard they will hesitate to contact you when something's wrong and that does impact the animal's welfare so I suppose that was just my point that I really kind of wanted to reiterate from the veterinary side of it and having been an owner on the other side as well you know I maybe sometimes I look at

it with a more critical eye because I've been on both sides and the other thing that stood out to me from this paper is some of the comments around pain because pain is has always been one of those big things for me because I think all of our animals will trudge on to a degree with pain You know, they'll just persevere, probably more so than I would, certainly without complaining. But Ines, you know, someone had said that he was always lame when they were talking about their horse.

And they said, but to me, he wasn't in pain lame. And I thought that was a really interesting comment because... You know, you can have essentially a functional lameness. It's not always the case, but there can be a lameness where there's not pain necessarily involved. It can be due to structural or musculature issues that no longer cause pain, but they don't necessarily walk with the right gait anymore. And that can occur. And that's something to point out.

You know, that doesn't mean that horse needs to be on pain medication because they're lame.

They probably need a modification in lifestyle so if you were jumping with that horse probably wouldn't do that anymore it'd probably change you know what they're being used for and consider their environment but some of the other comments I felt like and I don't know if you'll have taken the same feeling Nancy so it'd be great to see your opinion but I suppose from the veterinary side I was just always hesitant with there's one or two that were this I know the

owners were worried about using butte long term because of the issues that it can have with the liver and there's side effects to using things like that. And especially in older horses, we can worry about some of the meds that we're using as pain relief.

But it made me a little bit concerned because I think there was one comment that I can't pick out just now. But it said they were doing well, so they stopped the pain relief.

And then however they'd worded it was that then they'd started again if the horse wasn't doing well and to me I just thought it sounded like the pain relief was working not that it was finished working yeah so I suppose it's finding the subtleties in that too if you stop the pain relief and they do start to go backwards then that's a clear sign that it was necessary. And it's probably not ideal to take a break from it.

But we see this a lot with cats. Sorry, I'll get your opinion actually on that, Nancy, first. Oh, I agree wholeheartedly because... If you're giving pain relief and then the lameness resolves, improves, it's that pain relief because, you know, most of these people tried everything previous to calling the vet. And then the one lady even said she reframed her horse's issues kind of in light of veterinary assessment.

So sometimes human nature, you try to make things seem better than they really are. Sometimes you lessen what you're seeing. And I think that is human nature. You make light of things because you don't want to deal with anything that's too serious. And that stuck out with me. And then the other thing was, You talked about veterinarians and veterinary professionals treating people, number one, with compassion.

This did point out that interactions with veterinarians have the potential to influence an owner's sense of self. So sometimes then they shut down and they won't communicate because they feel like it's their fault or they're not doing an adequate job managing the horse or they're bad horse owners. That's a balancing act, Kate, when that happens. You know, when people get offended and then they move on to another veterinarian, you know, and then it becomes a pattern.

So that's a tough thing to overcome. And if you're an owner, maybe look back and see, am I getting offended too often? Or do I always think I know more than the veterinarian knows? Because that affects your horse's welfare.

And you know Kate and I with our studies that you know I'm always willing to realize oh my god the more I learn the less I know I know and the worst and I always question am I doing the right thing here and you know my god how many hours have we studied the new research and you know different things that happen to horses and all the years on the racetrack for me, I'm just like, oh my God, I hope, I hope my vet knows more about this and what he thinks or she thinks.

And anyway, I agree with you. I think we're so apt to pull that pain medication away and they need it, especially older horses. Yeah, because we've seen that. The point I was going to mention about cats is cats are very good at hiding pain. Like they are, I think they're just behaviorally very cool in general. But I've always said I'm more of a dog person in real life.

But when I was in practice, I just loved working with cats because I just had the utmost respect for the fact that they really are in control of what's happening and they're in charge of us.

We're just trying to work within their boundaries but we would see like older cats and they wouldn't have to be that old like they could be six seven eight years old and you know some cats will live up to their 20s even but at that stage we might see them come in for something like a random accident where they might need some stitches or you know they might need some kind of procedure where they'll go home with pain relief and then they come in for a checkup and you ask the owner how they

are and the owner's like oh my gosh they are so friendly I don't know what's in that medication but they are cuddling me and they're being really sweet and that is just not them like the last couple years they've just been like grumpier and grumpier and that always was the. Aside from this acute injury we're now treating, this cat probably had some form of osteoarthritis going on before this and was grumbling along in silent pain. And the behavior was the big signal.

And one of the comments in this was an owner said that their horse was in pain. And when the horse would stumble, it would turn around and almost snap at the owner.

And how the owner perceived that was that the horse was snapping at them as if it was their fault but then the owner also dismissed in the next sentence that the horse had that power to think that and said something like I know that's crazy though the horse couldn't think that but I thought to myself like if the horse is stumbling forward and turning around and snapping at you it's probably because the weight is making

it worse and the horse is very aware of that So it's not that they're assigning blame, but they're purposefully pointing out where the issue is coming from and what's causing the problem. And if you're not on their back, are they still stumbling? If you're not on their back and they stumble, do they still turn around and snap behind them? Or do they just get frustrated in a different way? The intricacies of their behavior can just tell us such things.

A big story about how they're feeling. And I think, you know, I grew up definitely in a society where we were quick to label mares as being narky or. You know, they're just a bit hormonal or they're frustrated or they're a bit more snappy than the geldings.

And it wasn't all the mares, though. When you look across the herd, it's like you might have had one or two that was the so-called narky mayor and are they actually in pain when you look back on it like was there something going on that we were just missing so we were quick to assign us to them just being a mayor yeah yep I know it's what that's why that day when that fan squealed so loud and it actually stopped running she should have reacted and yeah that told me

everything I needed to know at that point and yeah I think that's some good good points Kate and I've really enjoyed this paper I don't know if it's because of my situation with Greta or what but I thought you know it really kind of highlights owning horses because even young horses you end up with hoof pain late you know some form of muscular pain or skeletal pain or whatever and this is a pretty good read and i think the bottom line is you know know your

horse and then have a good relationship with a good veterinary team. Yeah, I think that's a great point. The last thing I just thought of as you were saying that is, it came to me as well reading the paper, you know, if you took 40 adults and put them in a room, you wouldn't expect all of them to be athletes, but we'll expect every horse to be capable of being ridden. And some of them just don't have the confirmation for it.

You know, they will end up being lame and they just can't take certain weight loads because we don't have x-ray vision and we can't see inside every horse before we start riding them to know that they'll have these problems or they might have joint issues from the get-go. Yeah. And, you know, there's so much, there's so many other ways you can enjoy your horse. Look at my pony.

She likes to be, she likes driving. And but I still ride her, too, to keep her guessing, you know, but definitely better behaved during pulling up a cart than me sitting on her back. And it's just her. I think, you know, she kind of have to to keep their mind in the game, too, as well. So but anyway, thanks so much, Kate, for taking the time.

I know you're so busy with everything. and you see Nancy it's been a whirlwind of a couple of months it has and you know we'll try and get together again I we have a few interview requests and one of them's a body worker so maybe following this we'll have her come on and she's got some interesting holistic.

Horse theories and all that yeah so I told her to shoot me a few dates that would work and then Kate I'll send them on to you and maybe we can meet back together for to let her do most of the talking, Brilliant. That sounds fantastic. Okay. Well, thanks so much, Nancy. Okay. Thank you, Kate. Appreciate it. Take care. You too. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, give us a five-star review from wherever you listen from.

Also, drop us a line or follow us at nancy underscore mclean seven on instagram thanks so much everyone have a great week bye.