Lymes Disease

Just found out that we had a horse come down with Lymes Disease and we're dosing her with Doxycyclin right now to fix it.

Has anyone had any experience with permenant after effects from Lymes and how long the disease was present before you treated for it? She may have had this a while since she has been lame for a while.

With Lyme disease, if you don't kill it all in the initial treatment, it can re-occur from time to time in the future. My horse had it in April. We did the full 30 days of Doxy and so far he's shown no signs of relapse. It's tricky illness. Hopefully you found it early and there won't be any long term problems.

Unfortunately it wasn't as early as we'd like. She came to us with back problems and we assumed that the lameness and crabbieness were a part of those so she went back and forth to the chiropractor. She also had socialization issues with other horses and withdrawl from the steroids she was fed as a racehorse so she was a mess. We can't really tell whether she has had it a long time or whether it developed after she went lame, that's why I was curious about long term effects.

I visited her last night and she looked to be feeling a lot better. I worked her in hand for a while and she seemed to be picking up her feet better than she has which is a nice sign.

Polo Pony, please note that it is Lyme not Lymes. That might help you when you are doing some Google searches.

I treated my old horse for Lyme. We did the Doxy for three months. He showed vast improvement after the first month but we continued on with it because he still had some lingering issues. After the three months of treatment he was completely rideable and still continued on with his jumping career with no limitations. The only problem he ever had was that when we got the first cold snap every year it would stiffen him up for about a week and he would get that stiff eggshell walk. We would give him low doses of bute just for that first couple of days and then he was fine the rest of winter. He would also occasionally get very stiff after the farrier did his back feet so we stopped using the pedestal thing that they prop their feet up on and make them hold in that awkward position and he didn't have any problems after that. I have heard of some people having a recurrence of it; however, he was only treated for that initial 3 months and has been very rideable and competitive ever since. Good Luck with the treatment!! Molasses is your friend for getting those crushed pills down the gullet. I think that you will find that after a month or so of treatment you will see an incredible recovery. It just took a long time to build my guy's stamina back up. Let us know how it goes :)

Yeah, kind of along the lines of what MissPhoebe said, if it's going to have a recurrence, it will be along the lines of how arthritis works. Weather triggers it. Damp cold weather will just create a little more stiffness. Just be careful to do a lot of warmup walking before doing any hard core work. Also, I noticed coming out of winter, when it first warms up, tends to trigger relapses. You'll get to know her as to what's normal for her over the next few months. Just keep an eye on her and you'll be fine.