AstroGypsies

I am thoroughly tired of ticks. Picking them off the cats, picking them off myself and Mike. Finding ones feeding on us, the cats, and now the horses seem to be going through a very ticky Fall! Yikes! Now, I know what it’s like to get bitten, they itch for weeks those bites, form scabs like craters and this Summer I also discovered they left me a little surprise, anaplasmosis.

Anaplasmosis is a disease caused by the bacteria A. phagocytophilum. These bacteria are spread to people by tick bites primarily from:

• The blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis)
• The western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus)

People with anaplasmosis will often have fever, headache, chills, and muscle aches. Doxycycline is the drug of choice for adults and children of all ages with anaplasmosis. I endured two weeks of it, the antibiotic which didn’t sit well with my stomach, food or not! I went to the doctor wondering why my hips joints decided to crap out on me…sigh…it also can trigger rheumatoid arthritis…oh joy. The Lyme came back negative, the anaplasmosis test took three weeks to come back, it was positive…0_0…I have another few weeks to get in to see the rheumatologist to find out more but hey, that’s life.

So when I got the call from Jennifer at the barn that Maya, our 24 year old Hanoverian mare was not eating and had a temperature, she called the vet right away. I’d picked five engorged ticks off her the day before, and counted another ten or so scabs from bites…what the heck??!!! I felt bad I had not brought her in the Sunday before to groom her, she was so happy grazing with her young friend Snaxx I didn’t want to disturb her beautiful Fall grazing time.

When I got down to the barn she was lethargic and a bit wobbly, not eating, her temperature wasn’t bad, it had been elevated in the morning. Gus, the vet ruled out teeth and colic and I asked if we could test for lyme and anaplasmosis. We decided that antibiotics would be a good start. Gus put a catheter in her neck vein and started her on 30cc of tetracycline, she didn’t have a great reaction to it, got very wobbly but recovered. It was decided to administer 15cc. wait 10 minutes, then administer the next 15cc for the next three days and stall rest. So that is what I have been doing this week.

The next morning she hadn’t eaten…very bad when horses don’t eat or drink, so Gus stopped by again and gave her some pain killer, that seemed to do the trick and she started to nibble on her food! Yeah! He called Jennifer this morning as he received the test results and she has BOTH Lyme and Anaplasmosis! If you’re gonna do it…go all in!

She’s had her course of antibiotics so now we will wait and see if that got it…I spent the first night fretting on how we were going to drag her dead body out of the stall the next morning, she looked that bad…so hard with animals when they can’t tell you what is wrong.

This mare was born in front of us, on a busy Saturday morning with riding lessons going on. Those kids got to see the magic of birth. Her mother Valentine was an old hand, she was foal five. Also the most independent foal, poor Valentine! Her first day out she took off down the driveway towards the road with her mother screaming after her! I’d been waiting for a filly, she was a keeper:)

Here we are 24 years later, learning something new that horses, and people and get and suffer from. I’m writing this in hopes that it might help someone else with a sick horse. In retrospect, Maya has been somewhat sluggish all Summer, I put it down to aging and the heat, but now I wonder if she contracted Lyme earlier, then Anaplasmosis recently, or vis a versa. It pays to be informed. If I hadn’t asked to be tested myself, for anaplasmosis, I never would have known what was ailing me, it wasn’t something they were going to do. Now we just need those darn possums to move in and start eating those ticks! We’ll work on a strategy for Spring. A few more hard freezes and hopefully we can rest a bit easier. Saludos amigos! We’ll be back to Fall birds and more misty mornings soon-stay tuned!