A very sobering and sad email forwarded from Melissa Ribley, Chair of the AERC Veterinary Committee.
I have known Trish Dowling for more than 15 years since we were both faculty at Saskatoon¹s Western College of Veterinary Medicine in the 90s. She has an outstanding international reputation as pharmacologist, internal equine medicine specialist, and a horsewoman. She has been a fine friend of mine for many years and fabulous supporter of all things endurance. She is one of a kind.?
This is a truly terrible thing, and my heart goes out to her and her family.
For those of you of who would want to send a sympathy note, her email is trisha.dowling@usask.ca
Olin
Subject: please send out to members
I wanted to let everyone know that Dr. Trish Dowling from the vet college in Saskatoon is involved in a really awful situation with her horses. She had taken two of her horses to the stable for riding lessons that has since been quarantined with the EHV (Equine Herpes Virus) outbreak . The horses were never in contact with other horses and didn't drink out of stable buckets etc. But they both came down with symptoms and one died. All the rest of her horses are now sick except her international which she is giving very expensive antiviral drugs to. 5 of her horses are showing neurological symptoms. There was an outbreak of EHV in Florida in January and there was 7 horses with neurological symptoms and 6 of them died. So this is a very dangerous strain. Apparently there was a horse sale in Saskatoon yesterday and one of the horses in the sales ring went down and seizured. It might not have been EHV but it quite likely could have been and in that case the disease will have been spread far and wide. So I think we all need to be very careful where we take our horses.
Don't want to alarm everyone but I think we need to be aware.
