Warning

A year ago, a friend walks out to her barn to visit with her horses and give them a routine dose of worm medicine.  As always, her faithful sidekick, a middle aged black lab, is at her side.  It's an ordinary thing and an ordinary day, something she has done dozens, maybe hundreds of times.  One of the horses is not overly pleased about her nasty tasting dose of wormer, which is ordinary too, none of them like it.  One of the horses manages to spit out a big glob of the gooey paste; so many of them are so very good at this.  The stuff ends up all over the place.  No big deal, it's annoying that the darned horse has gone and wasted her medicine, but the stuff is cheap and the horse probably got most of it anyway.

The dog, as dogs are apt to do, helpfully dashes in to clean up the mess.

A few hours later, the helpful dog is drooling uncontrollably, vomiting, staggering, disoriented and finally lapses into a coma.  No one knows what is wrong.  Is he having some kind of seizure?  Did he find rat poison?  He is rushed to the vet, they put him on heavy IV fluids, trying to flush whatever toxin he has found and prevent liver and kidney failure.  Agonizing days go by. 

Will he live? 

Maybe.

Yes, he is awake.

But he is blind.

Will he recover?

No one knows.  No one can know.

More agonizing days go by.

Eventually, some of his sight returns.

Will he get better?

Maybe, no one knows.

More days go by.

He does recover.

Mostly.

Eventually.

He is one of the lucky ones, he might not have.

That afternoon the woman racks her brain, what could have caused this?  The woman's daughter asks, "didn't you worm the horses that day?"

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A week ago, another friend on another farm, with another dog, walks out to the barn to visit his horses and give them a routine dose of worm medicine.  As always, his faithful sidekick, a 4 year old English Shepherd, is at his side.....

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Ivermectin is one of the most frequently used worm medicines.  It is very effective, cheap, easy to use.  It is used in most livestock including horses, cattle, sheep, goats cats and to treat and prevent heartworm in dogs.  Some dogs have a genetic mutation that makes them have a severe, often fatal reaction to the drug, even in small doses.  Many people think that it is only collies who have this reaction, that is not true.  The mutation can pop up nearly everywhere and can occur in dogs that have suffered a trauma to the head, in any puppy or in an animal who has encountered some other kind of poison.  There is no treatment for it.

In horse size doses, it can be fatal to ALL dogs, whether they have the genetic mutation or not.  

It is Fall and, for many of us, it is time to de-worm our horses.  Nearly all of us will be using ivermectin or one of its related drugs.   Please be careful and keep your faithful sidekicks far away.

Be particulalry careful with any drug in the ivermectin family:

ivermectin

salimectin

moxidectin

Click here for more information.