Stubborn is Good

Back in January, when Ben was so sick with the latest tick-borne disease to plague us, there was one day in particular that I came very close to calling the vet to come out and give that most final of gifts. Ben was lying down and showing no inclination to get up.  He was in a lot of pain and severely depressed.  I went out and sat with him, rubbed his ears, scratched his neck, massaged his muscles, and I asked him,

"Are you done Ben?  Truly done?"

I rubbed his ears some more, told him I would miss him if he left and finally, he sighed and moaned a bit and then heaved himself to his very sore feet.  He pressed his head against my chest and I wrapped my arms around him and said,

"OK, you stay on your feet and I will fight this thing till we win.  Don't give up on me and I won't give up on you."

Ben did get better, but I was not sure he would ever be sound again.  He recovered slowly, in small, immeasurable increments.  I worked on the foot that had foundered a little at a time to bring it back into balance.  His joints pained him a little less every day.  The light slowly came back to his eyes.

On Monday afternoon, we had a brief respite from nearly constant rain and, on the spur of the moment, Ben and I went for a drive.

Ben hasn't been out since last fall, but I tossed the ill-fitting harness on him, hitched him to the borrowed cart and off we went.  Quiet, steady and good as gold.

Ben is a very sweet, easygoing, lovable fellow with a solid core of donkey toughness and implacability.  He can be very stubborn.

If Ben likes you and you ask nicely, he will do anything for you.  If you get into an argument with Ben, you have already lost.  If you try to push him around, he becomes as immovable as Everest.  Tell him how good and wonderful he is and show him that you mean it and he would walk into a volcano with you.

He is an excellent companion for a quiet drive in the country.  I wasn't sure we would ever be doing this again.

I am so glad the toughness and implacability won out.  Stubborn is good.

State of the Barn Address

The boys are both doing better. Yesterday was the first day of the new year that no one got any drugs.  I know, crazy right?

Ben is feeling like his old self.  He still shows some soreness in his right front because of the laminitic changes in that foot.  However, I doubt anyone but me would notice.  I trimmed the foot again this morning and brought the heel down another couple of millimeters and that has helped.  It will take 8-10 months of careful trimming for that to fully heal, but he is nearly 100% sound on it.  Considering that there were a few days last month when I came very close to making that last vet visit for Ben, I think he is doing very well now.

Meanwhile, he is happy and feeling good enough to be ornery about being locked in for breakfast this morning.  When he gets impatient, he kicks the back wall, which is not good for his leg or the wall.  He does not do it often anymore because every time it happens, I add an extra 10 minutes to his incarceration and refuse to let him out until he stands politely.  He is a smart fellow and he knows better, I take this morning's protest as a sign of good health.  Besides, it is hard to stay mad at him because he wants his freedom so he can come over to me and get his daily hug quota.  It is hard to be annoyed with a giant donkey who just wants a hug and an ear rub.

I had still been giving Ramsey Previcox every day as he was sore and short-strided without it.  After Ramsey had surgery when he was a baby, he had a lot of trouble with the tendon contracting in that leg because he would not use it.  To this day, whenever he gets lame on that leg and he stops using it fully, that tendon contracts again.  It happens in just a matter of hours and is why pain management is crucial for him.  Ramsey may be all grown up now, but inside, he is still the baby donkey who spent two weeks at Cornell.

We have had a lot of cold, damp weather this winter and that really seems to bother Ramsey.  Today though, the sun came out and we had a glorious sunny day in the 40's.  I skipped the pain med and he did fine.  If he gets stiff again, I am going to try him on the turmeric paste once more as I hate to have him on pain medication for prolonged periods, especially at his age.  I suspect he will always need something to help in the winter months, but he is better.  Sunshine sure does help.

Ramsey is still not thrilled to have Ben around.  He has accepted it and they coexist well enough, but Ramsey would not mind in the least if Ben were to disappear.  I had hoped that Ramsey would like having another gelding around to play with, but mostly, he just feels like his home has been invaded.  He tolerates the occupying force, but he would still rather hang out with Mom.

I don't think Ramsey will ever grow up.  Which is OK because I love him as is:)

The girls are doing well.  Tessa is fine with Ben.  She loves her donkeys and Ben is just that much more to love.  She is a funny horse who generally lives in a state of semi clueless contentment.  She is entirely oblivious to the subtler donkey dramas going on under her nose and lives in a bubble of happiness that I often wish I could enter.  If I could bottle that, I'd make billions selling it as an anti-depressant.  She is also the herd defender though.  If she sees something that might pose a threat to her herd, she wakes right up and charges in to defend them.  Coyotes give my pasture a very wide berth.

Emma is usually the bridge between Ben and Ramsey.  She has a somewhat hesitant friendship with Ben that both annoys and fascinates Ramsey and it often draws him in, if only so he does not feel left out.  Of all my animals, Emma has the most complex personality (well...she and Connor might share that honor).  She remains shy, thoughtful and wary, but is also the quickest learner and the bravest (and most stubborn) of the bunch.  Emma knows her mind and it takes a mighty effort to change it.

The herd are all finally doing well once again.

Me though - my nerves are shot, 2017 has already been a tough year.

Everyone agrees that this latest problem is definitely a tick borne disease, but it does not show up on a regular Lyme test.  It is either a strain of Lyme that the tests do not recognize or it is some other tick borne disease that we can't identify.  Ben was hit the hardest, but he has recovered. The tough part now is that this disease really exacerbated any underlying defect in the hooves and joints and that will linger.

Ben had some minor hoof wall separation in his right front foot when this started and that turned into laminitis.  Ramsey's right front foot is compromised because of his surgery and he has some arthritis in that leg as well.  This illness went straight for the weakest points and hit them hard.

There was a question about whether or not the Lyme vaccine I gave everybody was effective at all.

The answer is: I have no idea.

Will I continue to vaccinate them for Lyme?  Probably.  The data I have seen so far indicates that it does work in horses.

Does that mean it works in donkeys?  No one has any idea.

It may be that the vaccine did help.  Ramsey has a longer vaccine history than Ben and he was not as bad as Ben.  Did the vaccine help?  Was it because I caught it early?

Beats me.  Maybe the vaccine only helps Tessa and just makes me feel like I am doing something to protect the donkeys.  I don't know that either.  I also don't know what else I could do.

The vaccine does not cover all of the different strains of Lyme and it doesn't do anything for other tick borne diseases.  And that is what has me really stressed.  I feel like I am under siege and I have no way to protect my animals from an enemy that can't see or defend against.  That is a problem I see no solution for and one that is going to keep my barn on high alert.

The 24 Hour Mark

We hit the 24 hour mark in antibiotic treatment this morning and Ben started to show some improvement.

A rare bit of sunshine didn't hurt.

By this evening, at 36 hours, there is definite improvement.  I am thrilled by this, but also a bit depressed and scared.  I am certain now that this whole episode is Lyme disease.

Again.

That adds up to a 100% infection rate for this property.  What the hell am I supposed to do about that?  Nukes really do seem like the only answer.

Happy New Year.

Bulls-Eye

Remember last year when I had to treat my whole herd for Lyme Disease?  One of the things that clued me in to them being sick was a very weird rash that Emma developed out of the blue last March.  It was a very odd rash that I could find no reason for, especially as the weather was brutally cold and dry.  Not exactly typical rash weather.  

Not only was the rash odd by itself, it was also odd in it's virulence and resistance to treatment.  Despite all efforts it progressed to a staph infection that had to be treated with antibiotics.  The way it cleared up instantly with antibiotic treatment and the way that Emma went from being grumpy and not wanting to be touched back to her cuddly self with that treatment was one of the things that made me call the vet and insist on testing for Lyme.  At the time, I think the vet was doing it in large part just to appease a paranoid owner, but, sure enough, they all had Lyme Disease.

Fast forward a year....everyone is doing well, knock-on-wood.  It is Spring and shedding is in full swing.  Emma has lost most of her outer coat and suddenly, her fluffy, soft undercoat is revealed along with this.....

Do you see it?  The perfect, dark brown circle over her flank and belly?  

That is where the rash was.  Because of the way it presented at the time and the way she lost the hair when it occurred, you could never see how perfectly round it was.  Last year, it seemed to show up and spread in a random pattern.  My jaw nearly dropped when I watched her walk by last evening at just the right time and in just the right light to see exactly what that rash really was.  I have never heard of animals presenting with the classic bulls-eye rash of Lyme Disease.  Now, I am wondering if it is just one more thing we humans are too egocentric to see.  

If that isn't a Bulls-Eye, I don't know what is. 

Vaccinating for Lyme

My little herd got their first Lyme vaccine last week.

I really agonized over this decision and before I was done, I think I had half a dozen vets on two continents agonizing over it with me.  I talked it over at length with my vet.  She talked it over with all of her colleagues.  I got in touch with some other vets I know and they talked it over.  In the end, together and separately, we all came to the same conclusion:

Given the near 100% infection rate in my little part of the world and the overwhelming likelihood of reinfection combined with the apparent safety of the vaccine when given to horses, it was really the only thing to do.  I've already found nearly 30 adult ticks and it's still only April, they are much worse in May.  I almost never find the nymphs, which are smaller than a pinhead and transmit 90% of Lyme disease.  What do you suppose the chances are of me being able to find all the ticks every day? 

I think I've already proven that I can't do it.  I doused everyone with the heavy duty permethrin, Tessa had a reaction to it and I still found ticks on the donkeys.  I am working on getting some guinea hens to, hopefully, kill ticks, but they won't be available until June.

As for giving the shot to the donkeys, one of these good people brought up an excellent point: almost none of the drugs we routinely give to donkeys has ever been trialed or been approved for use in donkeys.  

It took some digging, but I found that the vaccine has been used in quite a number of horses and we even found a few other donkeys who have gotten the shots so at least mine wouldn't be the very first.  None have reported adverse reactions.  In fact, the reaction rate in horses seems to be significantly lower than with most other vaccines they are routinely given.  This Lyme vaccine contains no adjuvants, which are what typically causes reactions.

Besides being worried about using the vaccine in the donkeys, we were worried about giving it to Tessa because she had quite a bad reaction a few weeks ago when she got her routine Spring shots (which she is not going to get again).  Of course, if we had known that she had Lyme before giving her those shots, we wouldn't have done it.  Such is the beauty of hindsight.  

Tessa does tend to be very sensitive and reactive to any possible irritant so giving her another shot, especially an experimental shot was scary as hell definitely worrisome.  Before she got the Lyme vaccine, we gave her a dose of banamine (NSAID) to help prevent problems.  It turned out to be unnecessary, but better safe than sorry.

All three of mine and RB's 2 mares all got their first shot last week and no one had any reaction whatsoever.  Emma and Ramsey were so busy mugging the vet tech that they never even noticed getting a shot at all.

(Hawkeye was treated for Lyme last Fall, but is showing renewed symptoms so is being retested.  If the test is positive again, he will have to be re-treated before he can be vaccinated.)

The vaccine protocol that is being used is pretty strict and has to be followed in order to be effective.  The vaccine used has to be the Recombitek Lyme vaccine made by Merial...

The protocol is three shots.  The first can be given any time so long as the animal tests negative for Lyme.  The second shot has to be given 3 weeks later, the third is given 3 months after that and then a yearly booster.  The timing does matter.

If the animal tests positive, it needs to be treated first. The shots can be started during treatment, mine got their first shot about 2 1/2 weeks into treatment.  Hopefully, it will start providing some protection before the antibiotics end next week and the ticks come out in force. 

This is not something I would have done unless I felt fairly confidant that it would be safe, be of use and if the Lyme situation in central NY weren't so bad.  Even if the vaccine works as hoped, I still need to be hyper vigilant about tick removal because the vaccine won't do anything to protect against other tick borne diseases.  Those are still rare (especially compared to Lyme) and the symptoms are more apparent so I hope we can avoid them.  There is nothing else to be done.

For anyone interested in learning more about this, all I can say is: talk to your vet.  Don't be surprised though if he/she refuses to even discuss it or completely rejects the idea because it is not yet approved.  You'll have to do your own research, weigh the risks, accept the liability and then find a vet who is willing to work with you. 

The Subtle Signs

Everyone is a lot happier since I started treating them for Lyme disease.  It is most noticeable in Emma.  I can't say when she started not feeling well as none of my animals ever exhibited outward signs of illness.  You always hear about flu-like symptoms, fever, etc, but I never saw any of that. Neither did RB with her horse or any of the (many) other animals I know about.  The symptoms of Lyme that I have seen are very subtle and easily dismissed as something else. 



In Emma, it was a gradual unwillingness to be touched and acting slightly withdrawn.  Emma loves a good scratching session, but slowly, she got to where she wanted no part of it.  It's a fairly common, but seldom mentioned  symptom of Lyme called hyperesthesia, which is defined as:

An abnormal or pathological increase in sensitivity to sensory stimuli, as of the skin to touch or the ear to sound. Also called oxyesthesia.

Heightened sensitivity to touch, often perceived as painful or irritating; commonly caused by nerve compression, shingles, chronic pain, or stress.

That about sums it up.  Emma went from being sweet and cuddly to stand-offish and grumpy.  It was easy to dismiss at first because of the cold (donkeys often don't like to be touched when it is cold or wet, I think it messes up their thermoregulation).   I knew there was something wrong, but it was so nebulous and incremental that I didn't see how bad it had gotten until I put her on antibiotics for the rash she developed and suddenly, just like that, she was once again her sweet, cuddly self sidling up next to me and pointing at the itchy spots.

That rash itself was an oddity that made warning bells go off in my mind.  Getting a staph infection out of the blue just because of a bug bite is the kind of thing you typically see only if the immune system is compromised.  Why would a young, healthy, well cared for donkey get a staph infection in the middle of winter?  

In Ramsey, I saw a subtle, shifting discomfort.  Not outright lameness, never a clear sign of pain that I could point at and say "there, that is the problem".  Rather, it was a general, body-wide achy-ness that I saw in an unwillingness to pick up his feet, frequent shifting of weight and mild grumpiness.

With Tessa, I only really see the signs now that they are gone.  She had been spookier than normal of late, which is not like her.  She didn't enjoy grooming. There were several occasions where she didn't want to let me catch her. At the time, I was just annoyed and baffled.  One of her faults is that she tends crowd and intrude on my personal space and yet I couldn't catch her? She too was mildly grumpy.

That slight grumpiness is the only common symptom I saw and all of these things were very small, vague and subjective.  They were easy to put off on the horrible weather, lack of exercise, etc.  The most notable "symptom" was that I went out to the barn each day and saw that my herd was not content anymore.  It's not easy to convince a vet that there is something wrong because, "my animals aren't happy anymore".  

Many vets don't even bother to treat Lyme in horses or dogs unless the animal has a notable fever or obvious, flu-like symptoms.  I've heard some of them say that nearly all the dogs and horses test positive, but they don't have symptoms so why bother to treat it.  I think the symptoms are just so individual and nebulous that they are often overlooked or dismissed as behavior issues or age related problems.  It makes me wonder just how many sick animals are really out there going from trainer to trainer trying to "fix" their behavior problems.  How many ten year old dogs or twenty year old horses have just been written off as being too old?  How many of those horses end up at the auction because they have a "bad attitude"?

I'm just glad that mine are doing well with treatment so far.  The first week was pretty rough as they all had some GI upset and weren't feeling great because of the medicine, but they are all doing better now.  That air of contentment that had been so lacking in the barn has returned and everyone is eager to be scratched and hugged once again.  I'm still trying to figure out how to keep it that way.

Vaccine Info and Satanic Plots

I haven't had time to write any blog posts, but for anyone interested, this is the only published data I have been able to find about vaccinating horses for Lyme disease.  The second link refers to a study that is occurring right now and will end in September 2015.  Pretty slim pickings:

http://www.ivis.org/proceedings/aaep/2003/divers2/ivis.pdf

http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/1001073-preventing-lyme-disease-in-horses.html

Emma has decided that she is NOT going to eat her medicine.  Molasses is gross and sticky.  Apple sauce is a plot by Satan to destroy all that is good and wholesome in the world.  Apple flavoring is just plain wrong and don't even think about ruining carrots with those nasty, evil little pills.  I think we are going to have to use the dreaded syringe.

She gave me quite a scare on Saturday when she didn't want to eat anything after just one day of medicine.  I talked her out of a complete hunger strike with some hay pellets, a little walk and a whole bale of hay out on my snowblower path - the lure of forbidden territory.    This morning, Ramsey gave his food dish a very skeptical look.

It's going to be a very long month.

I hate being right

I've had the feeling for the past couple of months that something isn't quite right with my beloved long ears.  It's not something I could easily put my finger on, just a bunch of little things that are off.  It's Emma not wanting to be scratched or petted.  It's the rash she got that turned into a staph infection.  It's the way she turned back into her lovable, huggable self two days after I started her on antibiotics. It's Ramsey shifting his weight off his good foot or stomping at flies that don't exist.  Ramsey acting grumpy.  Ramsey is many things; he's bratty, pushy, spoiled, charming, huggable, lovable, nosey, but never grumpy.  I knew there was something wrong.

When the vet was here last week I had her test them for Lyme disease.  The results came back today.  Emma is off-the-charts positive and Ramsey just a little less so.  I knew what she was going to say as soon as the phone rang.  I really, really hate being right.

We'll begin treatment just as soon as we figure out what the best option is for donkeys.