A gunshot killed the horse. There’s no doubt in Don Forth’s mind.

“I’m an old man, and I’ve been in the country all my life,” he said. “To my dying day, that horse was shot.”

Forth, 74, who boards horses at his Overbrook home in southwest Douglas County, found the part-Arabian mare on April 13 lying in a pool of blood in a pen. He insists the horse was shot, even though a veterinarian told him there might be another explanation and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office initially said the horse died of natural causes.

Forth lives about four miles from the Osage County line, where three horses have been indisputably shot and killed since March 18.

“We wanted to make people aware of what took place so that maybe we could stop this,” Forth said.

When Forth discovered the horse, he called the Sheriff’s Office, and a deputy visited and took a report. Forth also called a veterinarian, Tom Sanders.

The veterinarian didn’t find a gunshot wound, so he gave Forth a note saying the cause of death could have been a gunshot or could have been colic, a digestive disorder, Forth said.

Sanders couldn’t be reached for comment.

Lt. Kathy Tate, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office, said the veterinarian told the department the horse had died of natural causes. He told deputies the blood likely came from a gash the horse received on its head as it thrashed in pain from colic, Tate said.

Mary Pierpoint, Overbrook, feeds Lady at Don Forth's farm in Overbrook. Pierpoint is concerned about three horses being shot in nearby Osage County. She and Forth now believe another horse was shot to death the week before Easter at Forth's farm, where Pierpoint boards five horses.

Forth wasn’t satisfied with the veterinarian’s opinion. So later that day, the son of a woman who boards horses at Forth’s did an informal autopsy.

“My son went out and skinned back the forehead of the horse,” said Mary Pierpoint of Overbrook, who keeps five horses at Forth’s and was concerned about the death.

Her son, Mike Ludemann, didn’t find a bullet — she said that would have required cutting open the horse’s skull — but he did find what looked like the path of a small-gauge gunshot wound, she said.

“It looked like it went through the tear duct into the corner of the eye,” she said.

Police suspect the shootings in Osage County were from .22-caliber ammunition.

The horse’s body was removed from Forth’s property the next day. It belonged to a Garden City man and was not insured, Forth said.

A sheriff’s detective visited Forth’s home again this week to ask more questions about the death. Lt. Ken Massey, who supervises the sheriff’s detectives, said he considered the death to be suspicious and hadn’t ruled out that it was a shooting.

The department also has been in contact with the Osage County Sheriff’s Department, Massey said.