August and Anaplasmosis

A bit of a catch-up post here as August has seemed to completely fly by and my blogging goal of once a week has been stretched a little further than normal. I finally finished up my busy couple of weeks with our lessons and clinics and shifting my gears from Montego to Luna. Montego’s big Devon recap post will be later as I am waiting for some of the professional pictures to come back, but overall had such an amazing time and was really glad I had the opportunity to compete at Devon.

Luna has had off the past two weeks due to a bout of Anaplasmosis. She came in from the field one night and just was not into eating her hay or grain. Barn Owner took her temp and it was 103.8 so much higher than it should be. I had seen her earlier that day and she was her normal self, so immediately we both jumped to some Tick Borne Illness because where were located its the most common for a fever that quickly with no other symptoms. Of course this had to be on a Saturday Night, so the on-call vet came out, gave her a dose of IV banamine and a big dose of Oxytetracycline to start fighting the fever/anaplasmosis. For those who don’t know “Equine granulocytic anaplasmosis is a seasonal, tickborne bacterial disease of horses caused by an agent that can be transmitted to numerous other host species (via the tick), including people.”¹ The symptoms usually present as a high fever and lethargy and come on pretty quickly. The vet mentioned that if her fever still was around tomorrow she probably would need another dose of the Oxytet to wipe of the infection.

The next morning still only ate about half her breakfast and was running a lower grade fever than the day before, but still a fever, so the vet came out again for another dose of Oxytet. Of course being the sensitive flower that she is, the Oxytet completely disrupted her stomach and she was still not super interested in any of her feed which is totally not her. She was still into her hay and grazing, but the amount of grain she normally gets was not sitting well with her tummy so she got about 1.5weeks of Probiotics to help soothe that.

All of this of course was during my two busiest weeks preparing Montego for his show, so Luna got a bit of vacation until I knew she was completely healed and feeling 100% like herself. I ended up using the Equiotic Paste as her probiotic because I knew she was getting the amount she needed in paste form since she had been off her feed. One thing I am learning about her is she really internalizes her problems, so while I do not think she is a typical ulcer prone horse, I want to definitely be cautious in prepping her during stressful situations with probiotics, UlcerGard, and stomach soothers in the future.

Now that we’re out of the woods with the Anaplasmosis, Luna is back in the rotation of work. Both will probably end up with a couple days off this week due to the ungodly amount of rain they are calling for, but I want to get them both back into a pretty regular routine now that the weather is feeling cooler and they’re both feeling good,

My goal is to get Luna off property again in September, we need to practice our trailer loading again though to make sure its a smooth experience. Our jumping trainer is moving to a property about 5 min from us in Mid September until she leaves for Florida in November so my goal is to maybe get Luna over there a couple of times to school and get some weekly lessons before she heads back down south.