An Exposé
Maybe you already know what this post is about. Think about it. What is the thing that horse owner’s fear the most? I’m not talking about colic, either. Everyone knows someone with secondhand experience with this. Maybe it happened to the barn across town. Or even at the barn you currently board at – many years ago. I always thought that’s how this worked. It only happened at sale barns with dubious animal husbandry practices. Or it happened at the local boarding stable where we seem to get all our new riding students from.
Hi. I'm Smokey. I'm not sick. But I'll be your visual aid for future posts.
Hi. I'm Smokey. I'm not sick. But I'll be your visual aid for future posts.
Everyone has heard of it. Heard of some place that had it. The funny thing is: The news comes secondhand. I’ve never heard someone openly admit they had a case at their barn. Or that it spread throughout their stable like wildfire. But I know it has happened. I’ve heard about it.
What is this nightmare that no one talks about?
Strangles
*dun dun duuuuuun*
Just the sound of that word strikes fear in the hearts of barn owners and boarders alike. Speak that word at a horse show and you’re liable to get slapped. Or perhaps forcibly removed from the grounds just for suggesting that it exists.
I think you are realizing what I’m getting at here.
Our barn has had its first (and Lord willing, its last) case of Strangles.
I teeter-tottered quite a bit at whether or not this was blog-worthy. Frankly, my heart sinks at the thought of people knowing. But they will know. Even if I don’t tell them, they will know. It doesn’t matter that it’s a reportable disease here in Georgia. It’s also a gossip chain disease.
But then I really thought about it. If this was the barn down the street, I would want to know. I would want to know so I wouldn’t set foot on their property and possibly bring home tainted soil on my feet. Or let anyone that has been to that barn on my property without being sterilized first.
I should be telling the world about this.
The pony in question started showing signs of illness the week before Thanksgiving. None of our horses had left or arrived for 30 days prior to this, so Strangles was the least of our worries. We were wrong.
The evening before Thanksgiving she was diagnosed with probably (prior to lab test) having Strangles. By the time I sat down to Thanksgiving supper with my family, I had her quarantined in her own makeshift stall with a shelter overhead, as far away as possible from any area of the property that horses would possibly tread.
It has been 13 days since she was sequestered. None of our other horses have shown any signs of illness. The incubation period is supposed to be 7-10 days. I have read that it can be up to 21 days. So unless our other horses come into contact with something that I haven’t thought to disinfect, we should be okay. We should be. I pray that we are.
I’m not finished writing about this. My next post will talk about what steps we have taken to keep this away from the other horses on our farm. It will also tell how we are keeping it as our illness and not that of every other barn in the area. I will tell how I have played nursemaid for the last two weeks to my student’s love for a lifetime.
I know. You’re waiting on pins and needles. Just wait until I tell you in detail about the snot. The stinky snot.
In the meantime, you can read more about Strangles here. Apparently, it is a reportable disease in Maine, too. This is definitely something you should educate yourself about. Eventually, it will hit a little closer to home than you think.
