You get real attached to horses, they're more than just animals imho. Sorry for your friend's loss and your experience. I got a sad horse story myself (a long one too, looks like I got ot break it into two posts...)
When I was 16 I was working my first summer as an assistant range master at a Scout camp. Our duties ranged from cleaning every gun and sweeping up all the brass used the week prior, to instructing and teaching proper safety, shooting techniques and skills and responding the the occasional call by the resident forest ranger when needed for a possie to deal with everything posing an imediate threat throughout the summer, from rattlers to bears. A good buddy of mine since we were like 7 or 8, Jeff, was also working that summer down at the stables as a wrangler, this was his second year working the same camp and he dragged me along in the spring to help set it up for this year. In the end I was thankful, and I would of been anyways but especial because that secured me a spot working on the shootign range that summer.
We ended up sharing the same tent in the staff camp since we were both working the same 6 weeks there. It worked out to my vantage mostly because more nights than not he'd be out sleeping on the trail overnight or down at the coral overnight keeping watch, and I'd always be up late and one of the last staff to turn in, playing cards (especialy if we had some older female explorer scouts visiting that week, the "good" ones never did follow the camp's curfew and knew the easy out was at the staff card table) or reading a book or fixing a rifle if some part(s) arived in the mail that evening. Worked out for him too because nights where he didn't have to watch the stables or be out on the trail usualy I did as an armed "guide" (this was a bad bear year, there had already been one put down and two other known trouble bears frequenting the region, and the biggest bastage, a large male black bear, we suspecting was comming down with rabies or getting desperate).
So it comes around to the start of our 5th week. Saturday morning we ship out all the guests that were with us for the week before, the next batch weren't due to start arriving until noon on Sunday. By 1pm on Saturday 95% of the staffers are racing to town with most their paychecks for the week in hand and doing our best to have the most fun and trouble without having to get bailed out from the sheriff by our budy, the camps local resident goverment forest ranger, or worse our parents back home. Jeff and I probabley found some girl visiting and camping with friends on the river that weekend or some college guys up on the river for the weekend and a large party to keep ourselves occupied and out of trouble with until the wee hours of the morning, as long as we were at roll call by 10am, all was well.
About an hour before dawn we roll back into camp down the road after sobering up for a couple hours (the sheriff was alright for the most part and our hijinks, but had 0 tollerance for underage DUI). The first building along the entrance before getting into the heart of the camp is the resident ranger's. Something was up, his kitchen (his office) and all his porch lights we on, so we slowed down and he popped out the door to see who it was and urgently waved us in. I belive his name was Jim. He was a scrapy silver long-haired fellow in his late 40s that was at the end of the rope to his career in the forset service. He had a drinking problem sometimes and his wife left him a long time before he got bumped down to being stuck out there 24/7/365 working as a liason/representative of the forest service for us and our camp. Telling by the few things he had around the place decorating the walls, he was an army vet, likely Vietnam, but he never talked about it, and it never came up. He resented his life most the time, but getting stuck out there babysitting us was the best thing to happen for him in a long time, he loved the outdoors and peace and quiet, and with exception to summer and the camp being fully active, he had that there 9 months outa the year. He was also a good ways out of the way from his supervisors that might come waking him up at dawn and smeel the residuals of his previous night's drinking. As for us kids, the way he saw it, he was into a lot worse stuff around our age, and look how his life turned up, so we were always forgiven by him before we even explained the situation.
We headed up to the porch, and he walks out, unusually wide awake for him at this hour, and hands me his regular revolver in a spare belt holster and "the black guncase" key for the range. He was sporting his magnum and had his rifle over his shoulder. "I just called the vet. Jeff, something's happened to your horse, I'll tell you along the way." He motioned to his pickup and Jeff before turning to me and checking me over quickly to make sure I wasn't ripe from the river. "Make sure that's loaded, the big bear is around. We're riding at first light to try and tack him down. I haven't seen anyone else from the range yet. Get enough big stuff from the case for 5 of us, yourself and anyone else you grab from the range along your way. Meet the rest of us down at the stables ASAP." "Got it." And I took off for the staff camp imediatley to see if anyone else from the range had returned earlier. I found one other and was also able to raise outa bed Mike who worked the range the previous year but also had more experience with the camp's horses than I did.
