How old was your horse when you retired and why?

[SO1]

My pony is 20 and up to age of 17 no real problems.

The in February 2020 when YO went to catch him she noticed he was lame went cantering over. It was left suspensory branch inquiry. 3 months box rest and controlled exercise followed by small paddock turnout back to herd turnout and off rehab in September.

July 2021 trips over out hacking lame front right tendonitis. 8 months box rest and controlled exercise has been on small paddock turn out for 2 months almost ready for herd turnout. Now on Friday lame on left fore in trot. A junior vet happened to be at yard so looked at it 3/10 lame nothing obvious suggested box rest until lameness specialist and his normal vet from the practice can see him next week.

He is colic prone and has had three colic attacks since on box rest so I said to junior vet I was not going to put him back on box rest as it I think it aggrevates his colic and even when he was on box rest for his last injury he was having to be walked three times a day to reduce the risk of colic. He also got very tight and stiff this time when on box rest. So I have gone against junior vet instructions and he will go out for his half day in small paddock as usual but won't do his 45 minutes on the walker beforehand or be ridden. Though I may walk him for 20 minutes this afternoon to try and reduce the colic risk.

His rehab from his injury is almost complete due to finish end of May but he was doing 45 minutes on walker half day in small paddock and then 45 minutes ridden with 6 laps canter or 45 minutes walking in hand. He is normally very quiet in his small paddock but for some reason had a little buck just before he was caught in.

Obviously after nearly a year of rehab devastating that he is now lame on another leg although his two legs that were injured seems to be fine.

Specialist vet coming on Tuesday and I am hoping it will not be another soft tissue injury as having to do another year of rehab before we have even finished this one is soul destroying, exhausting and expensive costing me at least a £1000 a month as he is on part livery due to work commitments and being over an hour from the yard as I live in London. I was not getting home till 10.30pm at night on the 3 evenings I was walking him after work and at weekends I was walking for two hours a day plus he would do another hour on the walker. I also had to pay for a professional rider to help with 2nd rehab as he became difficult when starting trotting and no turnout. However worst off all I hate seeing him look glum on box rest he is so perked up over the last couple of months with his half day in small paddock.

I have said to YO I don't mind doing rehab again with walking, ice spa etc but only if he can go in small paddock every day. I will not be putting him back on box rest unless the only other option is PTS. I have had him for 15 years now. The priority for him now is good quality of life and if that means retirement early than so be it. I won't be able to afford another ridden horse.

He is quite high maintenance as after his latest colic attack on Sunday due to impaction he is no longer allowed dry hay. He had been on soaked previously due to weight control but last month stopped eating his very expensive low sugar diet hay soaked and would only eat it dry. YO has a selection of different hays to suit different horses so he has been moved on to hay which he will eat soaked again.

It would of cause be nice to be able to get him sound enough to ride even if just in walk but I feel at this stage I don't want a third consecutive yeat of rehab due to his age, the colic risk, the stiffness and the impact it is having on my mental health.

I am hoping whatever it is does not require box rest. If it is the start of arthritis or something not soft tissue related then I am in a lucky situation to be able to afford gel and more expensive treatments due to being insured and even if I wasn't I do have savings built up to fund emergency expensive vet treatment.

 

[Hepsibah]

My Fell pony was 25. Cushings, arthritis and me putting on weight during lockdown meant it just wasn't fair to keep expecting her to work. She is happy enough being retired though I think.

 

[SO1]

That is a good age I had hoped being a native pony that he would get to that sort of age before needing retirement.

My Fell pony was 25. Cushings, arthritis and me putting on weight during lockdown meant it just wasn't fair to keep expecting her to work. She is happy enough being retired though I think.

 

[milliepops]

The one i mentioned the other day who had recurrent soft tissue injuries retired at 20, she is now 25 and is very low maintenance, and looks very comfortable ruling the herd of field potatoes.
I took a companion for her at that time, a horse i knew when she was younger and had lived a busy life but arthritis had caught up with her, she was 21 when she retired and is still looking quite well, I think she is feeling her age a bit more now.

I have younger retirees. My WB retired at 9 (wobbler). My TB was 11 (another wobbler ) . My welshie is currently on long term sick at 17... i have a loose plan to let Dr Green have a crack at her for a couple of years and then see if she will stand up to some work but if not that's that.

i think sometimes people get lucky and keep their horses in work to an advanced age but equally with all the care in the world you can end up with a younger horse that can't manage it any more. A lot of it is just luck.

 

[Caol Ila]

I retired Gypsum, 16hh Shire-TBx, at 27. She was sound enough to do dressage for most of that year, but then started acting reluctant to take the canter in the school. She became a hacking-only horse for another six months and loved it, but then shortly before she turned 28, she no longer felt comfortable carrying a rider on the shortest and flattest hacks and was losing condition no matter what I fed her. I stopped all riding. A month after that, I put her down because she was becoming ataxic behind and did not gain any weight on the spring grass.

 

[HashRouge]

I think my girl was about 20 when I finally gave up riding her for good. She had been diagnosed with arthritis in her coffin joint and I did keep riding her for a bit, but to be honest she was too small for me by them. She's 14.2hh and very finely built, and I'm 5'7" (she's my childhood pony). So I just felt a bit uncomfortable about continuing to ride her once the arthritis was diagnosed, because I felt too big on her anyway. If she'd been a bit taller, or I'd been a bit smaller, I reckon I'd have been riding her into her mid-twenties as there's no reason she couldn't have kept hacking (she's 29 now). It was a really easy decision for me as I'd had over 10 good years of riding (and a lot of hoolying about the countryside as a teenager!) and I felt really at peace with retiring her.

 

[ester]

25/26? Had been on mostly hacking only for the previous 18 months or so (due to grumpy annular ligaments) but that may he was clearly not comfortable somewhere, ? feet, ? general arthritis (the hock he'd previously had injected was negative on flexion though) was a long hot hard ground summer and once it finally rained he lost a lot of retained sole which helped a lot. He wasn't quite himself off bute though so he stayed on it and was retired at that point. (Also he was at mum's not mine by then and she never really did like riding him so it was pointless continuing for everyone's sake, he certainly wasn't the type to mind not being ridden.

I meant to comment on your other post too about retiring natives/good doers. We have very good grazing (clay) but I didn't want him to be completely restricted in his retirement as that seemed a bit pants re. quality of life so we tried to find a happy medium. In the last year or so his teeth have deteriorated that he's pretty much unrestricted as he quids a fair bit back out again.

 

[Orangehorse]

I am still riding mine once or twice a week at 24, but every time I ride I wonder if it is for the last time. Last week and today he was good, even had a little canter. But some rides he feels like an old horse.

I have decided that he won't be doing any long box rest (had one episode a few years ago which was only 6 weeks but was a total nightmare, and in rehab even worse - although he did come back 100%), so it is entirely up to him now and how keen he seems to go out for a ride.

I confess I am surprised that I am still riding him, I thought he would have been retired long before 24.

 

[oldie48]

I retired the TB at 26, he'd been on light hacking for 2 years with people who hacked him out with me but he got trippy and I didn't want to risk either the rider or the horse getting an injury. I lost him at 28 to colic. I had to retire Rose last year at 13 due to injury in the field, just very sad about it but that's horses. She'd had 9 months rehab in perfect conditions but her hock would not settle and vet advised turning her away, sort of kill or cure, but sadly she hasn't improved enough to even hack out in walk. She was very good on box rest and her stable set up meant she could walk around a bit more than in most stables but she still didn't recover, tbh I have very mixed feelings about box rest but the horse I am riding ATM is 22 and had a very serious injury 10 years ago and came right. You just never know!

 

[irishdraft]

My current one retired at 12 with a soft tissue injury in the hoof which seem to have morphed into ringbone. He's field sound and extremely fat & happy I hope, he'll be 15 at the end of the month x.

 

[spotty_pony]

It really depends on the horse - my almost 23 year old was still hunting this season just gone and pulling like a train! I ride him 2-3 times per week (just hacking) and we pick and choose what we do do depending on the ground. He lets me know if he wants to have a good canter but if he’s happy walking, that’s fine too.

The one thing that stands out for me from reading this is - 45 mins on a walker?! Sounds a lot for a horse being rehabbed and can make lots of problems worse - my Vet said my boy could no longer go on a walker when diagnosed with hock arthritis because of the small circle.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

Various ages. Gray officially retired last year but unofficially at 16yo due to melanomas being in uncomfortable places for him to be happy being ridden.

My dartmoor retired at 10yo, made a come back for 1 show at 15yo and hasn't done anything since ?? no reason other than I got too big to ride him and he isn't a kids ride. He is 21yo this year and I might take him out to our local show in August for some inhand just because.

 

[AandK]

My late mare (lost her age 29) was retired at 12, she had a run of joint problems, (hocks, knee and then coffin joint) and after medicating the last one she just wasn’t happy being ridden. She actually did come back into low level work to go out on loan when she was in her v late teens. She was fully retired the last 9yrs of her life, it was her knee that led to her being PTS as it was sore on 2 bute a day and stopping her from lying down.

My 25yo was retired 3yrs ago. I’ve had him since 5yo and he had a couple of soft tissue injuries (suspensory branch in 2008, annular in 2015) but always bounced back so well. He also had a eye removed in 2018 due to cancer but again, made a come back to get placed at what was his last ever ODE later that year. In the end it was another injury, this time in front, straight sesamoidian ligament, quite a bad one! Vet said at least 18 months rest if I wanted to keep riding, so at his age and owing me nothing I retired him. He was already living out 24/7 and has had a great 3yrs, the leg did take a while to settle but it’s not bothered him for almost 2yrs now.

 

[SO1]

I trotted him up for YO today as she had not seen his lameness and will be dealing with vet on Tues and she wanted to see how he looked so she could see what he was like now to compare to how he is on Tues.

No sign of the left fore lameness on the hard and he is completely field sound. He has had a lovely morning out in the field yesterday and today. So although there is a risk that he has a soft tissue injury and that turnout in his small paddock will make it worse I think still best for both our mental health.

If he can have a few hours in his small paddock we are both happy.

I think any rehab yard that was able to put together an outdoor pen system where box rest horses could be next to each other in a small areas with decent grass so they could have small pen rest even if it enabled horses to get out for just a few hours a day would be quite profitable.

 

[pistolpete]

13 years old with stifle issue. Other one was 22 and used to be ’retired’ in the winter!

 

[skint1]

My gelding at 18 or 19 because of reoccurring lameness due to suspected Ddft damage, he also had Cushings and various arthritic joints. I think he was retired 3 years when he was euthenised in Feb. Sudden change in behaviour, no obvious signs. Escalated over months.

Thoroughbred mare, retired at 11. Behavioural issues under saddle, returned from a few loan homes. Now 18, happy companion to another retired tb mare.

ID mare, think she will be retired age 14, bad back Reoccurring ulcer. Just going through investigations.

 

[nikicb]

I think it's really hard to associate a certain age with retirement. They, like us, are all individuals. I lost my first mare to 'old age' when she was 35, and she was totally sound, barely even stiff, and had gone for her weekly mooch round the village 4 days before she came in and told us she was done. She never really retired, she just wound down. My next horse was retired at 8, although was in rehab from 6, due to 'something' wrong with his front feet - 2 sets of several weeks of work ups, MRIs, scans etc. and many thousand pounds of vets bills, thankfully covered by insurance, and the likelihood is that he doesn't have enough cartilage in his front feet, although that will only ever be known by doing an arthroscopy under GA. That will only confirm what I already know, ie he can't sustain regular work, so he lives the life of riley and is totally field sound. My 29 year old pony was only retired at 26 as he was found to have a grade 4 heart murmur on his routine annual check up. He would quite happily be doing PC stuff still, but I don't want to take the risk, especially with other people's children riding him.

Look at the horse in front of you, I know it's hard, but don't think of his age. Although I think if you are posting this, then you know what you need to do. I am sure you will work out what's right for both of you, however hard it might seem. xxx

 

[Cortez]

On average I’d say that of the many, many horses I have had they would retire around 18 - 19. Mine really work for a living and I like them to have at least a couple of years in the field, doing nothing but being a horse. The youngest was 15, the oldest 21, although he only came out for occasional days after he turned 18.

 

[ponynutz]

19 due to arthritis issues.
Still goes for the occasional hack.

 

[scats]

Depends on the horse!
JA pony was 27. I saw her have a seizure and decided riding wasn’t a good idea after that. She was fit as a fiddle and had just won her last jumping class. Stopping her work was like turning off a light and she went downhill fast and was gone within a few months. She was one of the only ponies I can truly say lived for her work.

Tb x Welsh was 6, collateral ligament injury in the field.
Hooligan was 13, navicular, arthritis, KS, DDFT injury.

 

[rabatsa]

12 due to hock and SI problems.

 

[Peglo]

15 for one with navicular. After a few years took her off bute and she was field sound (vet had a look at old X-rays and didn’t think it was navicular after all) think she just needed to retire.
21 for the TB. No reason other than she didn’t want to be ridden and I didn’t enjoy fighting with her. Maybe could’ve investigated why she didn’t want to be ridden but she never really enjoyed her work anyway.

 

[SO1]

So he has arthritis so he will have the gel in his hocks and coffin joints and go from there. Vet is hopeful that this will be successful and he can continue in light work which is good news. He has to do plenty of walking.

Horse walker is a very large one designed for rehab not the normal small one.

It is a big relief it is arthritis as that means no box rest required.

 

[lme]

Mine have retired at various ages. The first was 23. She was a bit creaky and then had the first of many field injuries being a prat. We lost her at 33. She grew old disgracefully. Children's ponies were mid to late teens. Stopped work due to lack of suitably sized riders and morphed into field ornaments. Another stopped at 15, after a fracture. She could have come back into work but was happy retired so didn't. She is now 20. Another retired at 12 with navicular changes. We could have medicated and carried on working her but felt it was better for her long term soundness not to. She is very happy retired. Latest retiree is 2. He was born with a too short extensor tendon. He would need operations requiring extensive box rest to have any sort of ridden career and we don't think that would be in his best interests. He is very happy in the field and super friendly.