Bradley is a 14 year old quarter horse. He was surrendered by his owners when they were investigated for neglect. He is very thin when he arrived, requiring extensive rehabilitation.

He was tattooed and was raced in his younger years. We didn't have any other history of his life.

The hardest part of rescue is, without a doubt, when you cannot save one - when your will, your hope, your determination just isn't enough. Sometimes the damage done before a horse gets to you is too great to overcome. We lost Bradley, and are sharing his foster home's words, because they're far better than any we could write about him:

This morning was hard. I took Bradley for his final trailer ride to the vet and we put him down. He was one of the kindest, gentlest, go with the flow horses and I would have loved to keep him forever. It really hurt my heart to have to make the decision to send him over the rainbow bridge because he was such a nice horse. He was gorgeous and had an amazing personality. Even though I could tell he was in pain, he was always such a gentleman for me and did whatever I asked. He was so tolerant of me treating his weekly abscesses and giving him nose kisses.

I kept praying that his lameness and pain were because of him being underweight and not having any muscle, but as he got close to full recovery I could tell it was something much more significant. I took him to see the best horse surgeon/lameness specialist I know and when he told me that the bone chip and osteoarthritis in his stifle were very bad and the only thing we could do for him was to try a daily pain med, I knew at some point we would have to make this decision.

But the daily pain medicine wasn't helping and it hurt my heart to see him continuing to drag his hind leg when he walked and to see him constantly shifting his weight in discomfort. I know we made the right decision to send Bradley over the rainbow bridge, but it hurt to say goodbye.
He didn't deserve the neglect that happened to him before he came into the rescue.