Excerpt from The Chronicle of the Horse:
“These aren’t normal times, you may have noticed, as you’ve scanned aisles at grocery stores completely bereft of paper products or cleaning supplies. The facility where you board your horse might be closed to all but essential personnel. If you keep horses at home, you’ve probably stockpiled some extra feed and are spraying down doorknobs and stall latches with disinfectant. Your farrier or veterinarian might be showing up wearing a mask.
Things are serious, and the coronavirus is likely to be a shadow hanging over our daily lives for months to come.
If, like most horse people, you’ve been trained (or learned through unfortunate experience) to prepare for the unexpected, your mind has probably already gone there: What if I get sick? Who will take care of the horses? What if I die? What will happen to them?
Although it shouldn’t necessarily take a global pandemic to spur these thoughts, here we are. And if you’re suddenly realizing how unprepared you are, you’re not alone. A study by Merrill Lynch published in 2019 found that only 55 percent of Americans age 55 or over have a will, and the percentages decrease for younger age groups.
But, legal experts say, it’s not too late to do something about it. In fact, now is the time to act precisely because things are so serious and uncertain.”
Photo by Mollie Bailey
