Today features some heartbreaking news coming out of inner-city Brisbane suburb, West End, as a brave young social media activist has been forced to shoot her high horse after it collapsed.

The activist, Kathleen Salisbury (24), is a vocal advocate on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bumble, for the rights of animals. She has a particular passion for the rights and liberties of horses, with a high horse named ‘Sass Machine’ that she has been riding upon for some years.

But after realising that her high horse has collapsed after a lunchtime at work where she ‘admittedly really enjoyed Flemington Race 7,’ Kathleen has been driven to a position where she has to shoot her high horse.

Putting down animals is never easy, but when it’s a high horse that has served you ever since you first read queer feminist theory in a first-university course entitled ‘POLY1000: Australian Social Policy & Its Consequences,’ it can be particularly difficult. It’s a high horse that even helped your Instagram transition into a fully-fledged campaign account for Stacey Abrams, Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia.

Whilst her friends have informed her that such dramatic measures are probably a little extreme, and she can have nuance in her views, Kathleen reportedly won’t have a bar of it.

‘The agonizing moans of my collapsed high horse can be heard up and down the sharehouses of Vulture St,’ Kathleen informed us.

‘I have to be merciful.’

As a stringent anti-gun activist and committed pacifist, Kathleen admittedly wonders how she’ll go about the actual process of killing her high horse. Starvation? Sleeping pill overdose?

Regardless, today is certainly a dark day for many, least of all the unfortunate high horses all across Australia.