Horses are living longer due to improved veterinary care, and geriatric horse welfare requires specific attention to dental health, nutrition, pain management, and social needs.
Senior horse welfare requires proactive rather than reactive management: conditions like PPID, dental disease, and osteoarthritis develop gradually and owners who interpret progressive decline as normal aging rather than treatable disease miss opportunities for welfare improvement. A horse with dental disease cannot process hay efficiently, losing condition despite appearing to eat; a horse with uncontrolled PPID has elevated cortisol chronically affecting metabolism and immune function; a horse with undertreated osteoarthritis experiences daily pain on every step. The welfare assessment challenge is that these conditions interact: dental disease causing weight loss, PPID causing immune compromise, and arthritis causing reduced movement all contribute to a syndrome of accelerating decline. Appropriate management of each condition simultaneously can maintain comfortable, quality life for many additional years.