Ridecamp: [RC] equine influenza

K S SWIGART katswig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


Tara Rothwell said:
>> Help! I am pretty sure that my horse has influenza. (yes he was last vaccinated in 
3/02). No fever. Symptoms first started about a week ago. Dry cough and clear runny 
nose. At first I thought it was alleriges/hay dust. We continued to train although no 
hard training this week (1x a 3 mile jog in hand). He is a bit down (sad). And not 
interested in food. My vet thinks influenza. Probably mild since I am the only one who 
really notices any symptoms and have been watching for fever/other Sxs. For those of 
you who have been through this how long to recover??? have a 75 miler planned in less 
than 2 weeks- an important one our last big training distance before the Tevis!! It 
will be over 2 weeks since his first symptoms, vet says he won't be contagious but I 
plan to keep him away from other horses and trailer alone. Thoughts out there?<<

I don't know if your horse has influenza (the lack of a fever would steer me away from
that); however, if my horse had a persistent cough (as in, not just a couple of hacks
to clear the dust out of his throat when we started out), then I would assume that it
had some sort of infection or irritation of the upper respiratory tract and have found 
that such things are best nipped in the bud. So my horse would get total "stall rest" 
(I put that in quotes because I don't really have what most people would call a stall, 
what it equates to is not stress to the respiratory system) until it went away.

Whether I went to the 75 mile endurance ride or not would depend on how the horse responded
to the stall rest, but even if the cough had gone away, I probably would not go to an
endurance ride, but rather would do my "long training miles" run up to Tevis at home. (I can
ride even 75 miles at home, which would be easier on both me and the horse.

Endurance ride camping etc. and/or any significant trailering compromise the immune system
even if I don't ride the horse even one mile, and trailering presents a respiratory stress
that I probably would consider too risky for a horse that is already compromised respiratorily.

So, if it were my horse, I would give my horse total rest (best not cooped up in an enclosed
box) for at least a week, then see if the cough has gone away.  If it has, I would spend another
week doing light work, with BRIEF bouts of heavy respiratory stress (as in a couple of minutes of
galloping) to ensure that it really has gone away.  And then I would do my "long training ride" after
that, with lots of loops back home as part of the ride so that stopping is really easy if the horse
starts to show signs of respiratory distress or coughing again.  And if the cough comes back during
any of this to go back to stall rest.

And if things did not progress pretty much along this time table (as in the cough persists long enough
to require two weeks of total stall rest to start with, then I would scrap my Tevis plans 
all together.

In my early days I did the "continue to work the horse with a mild cough" thing, and I ended up
with a horse with pneumonia which entailed 5 weeks of total stall rest and another 2 months of
SLOWLY brining it back to work.

Since then, I have learned that at the slightest sign of upper respiratory infection to take the
horse completely out of work, and they usually get over it in a couple of weeks instead of it 
taking months (and expensive drugs). In my experience, little coughs become big coughs if worked;
while little coughs go away quite quickly if rested entirely.

The lack of fever indicates to me that the horse probably has an irritated airway (rather than
influenza) so a little time to let the irritation subside may be all it takes.

Other things that I would consider, but I would talk with my vet about it first, would be
a cough supressant since sometimes it is the cough itself that is causing the cough (i.e.
the cough irritates the airway so the horse coughs, which irritates the airway, so it coughs
..) and if you can break that cycle, then it allows the irritation to subside and so the
coughing stops, so the airway can heal.  But I would want the horse off the cough supressant
for a while before I started any heavy work again.

kat
Orange County, Calif.





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