I am sure some of us in western states have vivid nightmare memories of the EHV-1 outbreak of 2012. When an outbreak at a championship show in Utah was not understood properly while there was still time to limit exposure, there was no shutdown/quarantine before competitors began leaving to return home, and hundreds of horses from the show spread out to over 20 states and Canada.
Before that moment, most of us and many vets had never heard of EHV-1.
I first heard of it when a vet at a major clinic in our area called our barn owner/manager, knowing the barn mostly had owners who showed, and told her to lock down the barn/property. “No horses in, no horses out, until this outbreak is considered under control”. And a LOT of protocols for humans, as several of us had friends at other barns and might encounter them.
Because horses from the Utah show had returned to our county. Our barn didn’t have any horses at direct risk in that moment, but a barn-lockdown was the only way to keep it that way.
That night there was a very serious emergency meeting of any interested horse owners to hear more details from a cadre of local vets. Big crowd at a public meeting space, people looked as if they had come straight from the barn, all disciplines. Cowboy hats to endurance outfits to English breeches. It was grim. A 17 year old girl was there in tears, with her dad, she was one of the owners who had just lost her horse to EHV-1. They felt moved to come and share, in hopes of helping other horses. Her story of how that horse crashed hard and fast, how it suffered, until they euthanized, was heartbreaking. “I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.”
And yep, when the word went out across the western U.S. that horse shows needed to cancel, there was a resisting chorus of those who pooh-pooh’ed any risk that impeded their plans to show over the next few weeks. It even made the local news in some towns.
From the article in the first post:
What I know now is that several horses at the LA February Show had traveled directly from the Desert International Horse Park, where an outbreak of equine herpesvirus-1 that ultimately would sicken and kill horses across the state had started a week earlier. The show in the desert had been canceled that weekend because of the outbreak.
What I know now is that, as of the weekend we were showing at LAEC, eight horses at DIHP had spiked fevers and tested positive for the virus, including three that presented neurological symptoms. What I know now is that the first horse, of many, that would be euthanized after developing equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy, the neurological version of EHV-1, was put down at DIHP on Feb. 18—the same day the show at LAEC began.
What I know now is the trainers and riders of four horses, including a pretty gray showing in our classes, ignored the state veterinarian’s recommended protocols, as well as entry restrictions put in place by the LA show’s organizers, by arriving at LAEC within the seven-day window their horses should have been isolated and observed for signs of illness.
Nero and I stood next to the gray horse, rode next to this horse, breathed the same air as this horse, for hours. Unknowingly, I put Nero in invisible danger.
