let’s get out of here and leave them alone. Has she nursed yet?”
“No, she’s having trouble finding the nipples.”
This was Silver’s first foal, and she obviously liked her baby. She constantly nickered to her, sniffed and nuzzled her, playing interference between the filly and any human who dared to get near. Silver’s mother, Goldie, and her sister, Copper, were watching from the neighboring stalls with their healthy foals at their sides.
“Goldie has been really upset about this filly,” said Carmen. “She acts like she knows something’s wrong.”
As Carmen tried to explain about her old mare’s behavior, her words set my mind wandering again, this time about Goldie. She had delivered six foals, including Silver and Copper. She had lost one at birth. Carmen and her husband, Ben, had driven into the barnyard on a spring afternoon to find the entire herd of horses racing around, calling out in distress, upset about something. They walked into the paddock to see what all the fuss was about and found a placenta. Goldie must have had her foal earlier than expected, but there was no foal. Ben searched outside the paddock and found the neonate along the irrigation ditch. It had fallen in the ditch, been swept downstream, and drowned.
Afterward, Goldie would not get pregnant the rest of that year. Every year before, she had given birth and conceived again on her first breeding. But not that year; we tried everything medically possible. The vet at the stallion’s barn and I both appeared incompetent. My diagnosis — her heart was not in it. We waited a year, and she conceived without difficulty, and she had every year since.
Now, I wondered how this foal’s death would affect Silver.
Carmen asked, “What do we do?”
We both knew that foals get most of their protective antibodies from the colostrum, the first milk. Without suckling, this foal would soon get weak, hypoglycemic, and hypothermic. “She’ll probably die tonight. It’s been cold, and she is having trouble finding the teat. Let’s let nature take its course.”
Carmen agreed. As I explained to her, no one knows what causes anophthalmia. It may be genetic, inherited, or it may be congenital, developmental, from a virus or toxic plant. It’s extremely rare. In case it is genetic, it’s best not to rebreed the same mare to the same stallion.
The next day I called, hoping to hear the filly had died, but Carmen said, “She’s doing great. She’s nursing and running around. Now what do we do?”
We discussed the options of letting her live, who might want her, and such. That gave me another day to avoid the inevitable. In a way, it felt cruel to leave the blind baby stumbling about a rough environment, injuring herself. There was also the fact that Carmen and Ben bred horses for sale, and nobody wanted to see a foal with a genetic defect. We eventually came to the same conclusion.
The day came. The thought of killing Silver’s foal made me sick to my stomach. My only consolation was the thought that Silver was a happy mother for a few days. On my way over, I stated out loud, “I want this to happen as gracefully as possible.”
Ben was waiting for me, seated at the barn door. The big, black mustache covering his lips did not conceal his frown. “This sucks,” said Ben. “She’s healthy and beautiful in every other way.”
I looked to see an active filly bouncing around her mother, nudging and nursing from her. The mare seemed peaceful and happy, watching her baby and nickering softly.
“What’s that?” I asked about a big red welt on the filly’s chest.
“Oh, that’s one of the places where she’s banged herself bumping into things.”
Carmen joined us. “Are we doing the right thing?”
I shook my head and sighed. “I don’t know.”
We silently went about the task. Carmen held Silver by the lead and offered her a large tub of grain. Ben grabbed the filly — which I named “Iris” because of her lack of ocular irises, and because it is a pretty flower that doesn’t bloom for very long. The mare gave a concerned nicker, looking to follow the foal. Carmen shoved the grain in her face, and she ate eagerly. Ben carried the filly into the adjoining stall, where I waited, and closed the gate.
Iris squirmed once against the injection and then died without the mare ever noticing. We laid her on the ground and walked out of the paddock, leaving the gate open. The mare finished her oats and came searching for her baby. She sniffed at her and seemed content to find her sleeping, then went over to eat hay.
I took a deep breath, gazing off toward the river, and caught Goldie staring at me. She was in a pen down the hill, watching me with her neck stretched up high and resting her jaw on top of a five-foot-tall panel fence. All the other horses were busy nibbling. But Goldie was staring at me. “Hi, Goldie,” I said. Her eyelids slowly closed then reopened with her eyes focused on me.
Goldie knew exactly who I was and what I did, and I knew her. I had floated her teeth, flushed the lacrimal ducts of her eyes, and been inside her orifices at the other end many times. I had cared for this mare both when she was well and when injured and in pain. She knew my touch and I knew hers. As we stared into each other’s eyes, we felt connected. We sensed each other’s thoughts. She was not upset, anxious, or angry. Her glare was the calm, stern, but approving look of a matriarch supervising chores. In the wild, I thought, the duty of culling the unfit might have been hers before wild animals intervened and ate the filly alive. It would have been safest for the herd to leave that foal behind.
Carmen had mentioned how Goldie acted as if she knew something was wrong with Iris. Maybe Goldie had an opinion or judgment about the foal. Animal behaviorists might call her behavior “instinctual,” which can be defined as an inner guidance or intuitive power, though not necessarily associated with mental evaluation. Instinctual acts are more like my self-defense moves in karate, without thought. Still, I wondered what motivated her behavior.
Carmen told me later that Silver nudged and pawed at her foal many times during the night. By morning, when they opened the gate, she ran out to the pasture to eat grass. She whinnied to the stallion and trotted around with her tail up, then went on grazing.
Other horses have grieved longer, as much as a week or more. Maybe grief had an effect on Goldie and her inability to conceive after her foal drowned. But Silver moved on with her life. She did not act depressed or exhibit shame about her inability to create a healthy baby; she appeared to hold no guilt for not protecting it. She showed no hatred toward people.
Do horses and other animals make moral judgments that include blame, shame, and guilt? We know they have feelings and care about one another; they have emotions and opinions. Mostly they are focused in the present, but they also remember and anticipate. They have instincts and guidance that directs them for migration, or awareness of impending weather. They make decisions based on preference, but perhaps they do not dwell in moral agony over what is good or evil. However, after considering Goldie’s emotional response to losing her foal and to the birth of Iris, I wonder. Events may not feel right, and animals may sense when something is wrong.
Historically, some animal behavioral scientists state that animals are amoral because they are not self-aware. Self-awareness means knowing that you are separate or different from another — that every individual has unique mental states and emotional experiences — and that you can assess the future or reflect on the past. I suspect animals have self-awareness, yet perhaps they have some other awareness, a sensation of oneness. If animals are not aware that they are separate, then maybe they are not. Perhaps they still live in monism in the garden and know we are all one. Only humans assume separation.
Some people say that having morals makes us superior to animals. But we are too often stuck in grief, reflecting on the past, trying to find something to blame. We feel bad while the horse is enjoying life. The animal’s way seems more paradisal. But what do I know? I may be as blind as Iris. As David Pugh, another large-animal veterinarian from the University of Georgia, often says — “I don’t know. I drive a truck for a living.”