Kent County, Michigan, sheriff’s deputies are investigating the shooting of a horse found dead by its owner Thanksgiving morning.

The Muskegon Chronicle says Debra Robach was startled when she discovered the horse laying motionless in a nearby pasture. She says the horse was still warm when she found it–a sign that the 33-year-old animal had been recently shot.

Robach says it’s unlikely someone mistook her horse for a deer, especially since she had spray-painted the animal with orange fluorescent hairspray as an added precaution.

Robach says her mare, named Fawn, was blind in one eye. And though it was considered elderly by horse standards and had never been ridden, her young grandchildren loved to sit on her