What is worth writing down each day
Five things carry almost all the information: how he ate, how he lay down and got up, how he moved, how bright he was, and anything unusual. Appetite is the earliest warning system most senior horses have, so note whether he finished his feeds and hay or left some. Rising matters because it is the movement old horses struggle with first — record whether he got up in one smooth effort, needed several rocks and attempts, or was found down longer than usual. Movement can be a line about stiffness warming out or lingering. Brightness is his interest in you, his feed and the yard: ears up and watching, or standing apart with his head low.
A format you will actually keep up
The best record is the one still being written months later, so make it take under a minute. One line per day is enough: a simple mark — good, middling or bad — followed by a few words, such as noting that he ate everything, rose easily and was stiff behind in the cold. Add the day's weather and anything that changed: a new rug, a farrier visit, a feed adjustment. A notebook by the feed bins works; so does a note on your phone, as long as it lives in one place rather than scattered across scraps. Each month, take a photograph of him from the same side, in the same light, to catch slow condition changes the eye adapts to.
Reading the patterns a diary reveals
A single bad day means little; the diary's power is in its patterns. You may find his bad days cluster after cold, wet nights, which tells you to rug up earlier or bring him in. You may see stiffness ease in the week after a routine changed, or appetite dip two days before any other sign whenever something is brewing. Owners often discover that a horse they described as up and down is actually good for three weeks in four — or the reverse, that the bad days have quietly become the majority. Patterns like these turn vague worry into specific conversations and specific changes.
Sharing the record at vet visits
Bring the diary to every vet visit and hand it over without summarising from memory. Vets make decisions about comfort, workload and further tests based on trends, and a dated record of appetite, rising and movement is worth more than an anxious owner's best recollection. It also protects you from the natural trap of judging everything by the most recent day: the horse who looks bright at the visit may have had a rough fortnight, and the record says so. If several people care for him, the diary gives everyone the same facts instead of four slightly different impressions of how he has been.
When the bad days start winning
There may come a point where the record shows the balance has tipped: bad days outnumbering good ones over a sustained stretch, appetite fading, rising becoming a struggle he dreads. That record is not a failure — it is the evidence that lets you talk honestly with your vet about comfort, quality of life and timing, with his actual experience in front of you rather than guilt or guesswork. Owners who keep the diary consistently say the same thing: when the hardest decision came, they knew. Keeping that record in KinsLe's Pet Passport, filed alongside his health history, means the whole picture of his later years is in one place for everyone who cares for him.