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Re: [RC] "Stump the vet , update"II - Kathy MayedaMy younger gelding was brought in from the pasture by the ranch foreman who caught me as I was taking my other horse to the vet for a leg injury. He had swollen spot on his chest about 8" in diameter. I take him to the vet, and the vet thought he was just kicked and didn't charge me for the visit. A week and half later, I was volunteering at a ride, and my regular vet from the same hospital was vetting. I told him about the swelling that didn't go down and he advised me to bring him in to the clinic and get it sampled. Sure enough - it was pigeon fever, dryland distemper, or pneumococusss something or other... no it's Corynebacterium Pseudotuberculosis, not regular strangles, which unfortunately we were under quarantine at my current baording facility!So Drako spent the next month in the nurse stall, going crazy. He never lost his appetite or energy the whole time. Hot packs, the black stuff, still didnt' soften for three weeks. It still didn't burst, so I asked the vet if I could turn him back into the pasture. They said sure. Barn management checked with the vets, and they said that the disease is not nose to nose contagious. Apparently the bacteria is in the ground and it takes an open wound - like a fly bite (or maybe in this case, a kick in the chest) to get infected. Ironically, when I did a web search for pigeon fever and found a picture of a horse so identical to Drako with an identical "kick in the chest". He goes back to the pasture, and 24 hours later I get him out of the pasture and the darn thing burst open with a huge gap in his chest. Gross. http://www.equestmagazine.com/v1s3/article12-3.htm This isn't the article I found last year, Drako is a bay Arab. If you do a websearch, you'll find Colorado vets treating it like strangles, and the California vets saying why bother quarantining. So he comes back to the sick pen and the vet comes out to lance it so that it would drain better the next day. Lances so that all the pus spills on the ground - no sanitary measures taken here by the vet. I take him to the wash rack to rinse it out and had another boarder go ballistic at me. (Of course, she read the Colorado articles, and is a total hypochondriac). Meanwhile, other two other boarders with infected sheaths are busy milking the pus into plastic bags and sterilizing themselves. Another one has a lump on his chest, ironically two of the horses that are infected are named Harley. Four cases concurrently at rather large facility and ALL of the cases are from different pastures and paddocks. None of the other horses in Drako's pasture got sick even though his abscess blew in the pasture. I found out a few months later that another horse, who was suddenly doing poorly at endurance rides, had a really bad internal abscessing from pigeon fever. Apparently pigeon fever seems to run in cycles and some years there are a lot of cases, and other years no one has even heard of it. K. ----- Original Message ----- From: "L gin" <ladurgin@xxxxxxx> To: <Ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 6:20 PM Subject: [RC] "Stump the vet , update"II
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