Equine Euthanasia and End-of-Life Considerations: Good Death as an Intimate Practice of Care

The challenge of managing animal death is part of the everyday care practices of horse retirement yards. In this chapter, we explore the ways in which equine death is accommodated as part of the horse–human relationship and how euthanasia becomes a form of interspecies care. Drawing on interviews with managers of horse retirement yards in the UK, we explore the ways of constructing animal death as good care. We approach ‘good death’ for animals as consecutive events and phases, considering how death is felt and managed as alternately present and absent in the everyday lives of retirement yards. In addition to the yard managers, we pay attention to the role of other carers, both animal and human, in the intertwining of care and death in the form of a shared accomplishment. A good equine death requires a constant and intimate practising of interspecies care in order to be able to determine the ‘right’ time to die for each horse.