Early to blog

Early blog today as my day has not gotten off to a flying start and I need to get it off my chest.



For as long as I have worked here, we have had a young lad come almost day after day to just stand at the paddock fence and just "be" with one of our horses for hours on end. He seemed to be a nice enough lad but we thought the behaviour a little strange, bordering on the obsessive as it did, and we therefore assumed he was probably suffering some form of mental illness so kept an eye on him, but tolerated him hanging around.



Fast forward a year to this summer, and the particular horse that he had become obsessed with had to be put to sleep. This horse had everything wrong with his legs that could possibly go wrong with a horses' legs. He was in a lot of pain and it was the kindest course of action we could take.



Then one of our staff, who didn't want the lad upset, told him that the horse had gone to Wales for a long holiday to rest his legs up. Everyone else fell in with the lie and when the lad popped up periodically, we would say, yes, he's doing fine. Then last Friday, he came in and asked me for the address where the horse was staying as he was going to see him. I felt that enough was enough and that we could not keep this lie going any longer. Sooner or later it was going to trip us up. So I told him that the horse had had to be put to sleep. I broke it very gently and explained that it was not fair to keep an animal alive when they are in such pain, etc etc. I was very sympathetic and told him how sorry I was as I knew how much he had loved the horse. He seemed to take it very well, although was quite shocked, but did take off at full speed once out of the office. I let everyone know so they knew what to say if they met him and forgot about it.



Saturday morning, the duty officer had a visit from his parents. His mother was crying her eyes out and explained that he suffers from Aspergers Syndrome and Autism and is a suicide risk. He had come home so upset on the Friday night that he had ripped all the pictures he had taken of the horse off his walls and locked himself in his room and wouldn't come out. They said the news had set him back to such a point that they didn't know how they were going to pull him back.



I can't tell you I feel right now. I can sit here and ask why his parents didn't tell us, knowing as they did about his obsession with the horse. It obviously never occurred to them that this situation might arise. Had we all known his situation, we would have handled it very differently. But we didn't know. I feel terrible about it and if anything happens to him, I am going to have to live with the fact that it was probably my fault. I'm really not sure how I'm going to deal with that.