Horses are highly antigenic, so it is very likely that you are sensitive to them. As folks above have mentioned, allergy immunotherapy is effective in reducing symptoms, use of medications, and quality of life in about 75% (depends on the study) of people who successfully complete a standard 3-5 year course of immunotherapy. While I don’t believe this has been specifically studied for allergies to horses, it has been shown for similar antigens (other animals and pollens). Shots against mold allergies are less effective, perhaps due to factors related to the proteins themselves or an inability to deliver adequate doses.
While allergy shots are generally effective, the degree to which symptoms are reduced is variable. Some patients will be “cured” and really have no further symptoms, some just won’t need to take quite as many antihistaminics, et cetera, to get through the day. And you won’t know how YOU will respond until you’ve gone through a lot of shots. While most patients have sustained improvements, some patients have recurrent symptoms after a variable length of time and end up back on shots, sometimes briefly, sometimes for many years. This long term use is less common with the standardized dosing generally used today.
Most commonly, shots are done weekly for about six months. This is the build up phase when the dosing is gradually increased until the maintenance phase is reached. Side effects include anaphylaxis (people do die from allergy shots, so have them done AT A PROVIDERS office in case you have a severe reaction. Do NOT self administer at home), but typically local swelling and itching at the shot site. Some patients will not be able to tolerate a standard rate of increase in shots, so build up sometimes takes longer than six months.
Once maintenance is reached, patients get shots monthly. While most patient who will respond feel an improvement after one year, shots are typically given for 2 full years before efficacy is evaluated. Patients who do not feel any improvement after 2 years generally won’t respond, even if they do the full 3-5 years.
Pregnancy is a contraindication to starting shots or increasing doses of shots, but patients who had started shots prior to pregnancy are most commonly continued at whatever dose (maintenance if they’d reached it, or the highest level in build up they’d reached) prior to pregnancy. The shots themselves are not the issue in pregnancy, but rather the associated risk of an allergic reaction that required epinephrine. Epinephrine is a powerful vasoconstrictor so can decrease placental blood flow and harm the fetus.
Non-shot approaches to controlling symptoms include nasal saline irrigation before and after exposure to antigens, regular use of nasal steroids, and use of antihistaminics, which can be increased as needed and dosed immediately prior to exposure, i.e. right before you go to the barn. Anything that reduces exposure, as noted above, masks, gloves, long sleeves, avoiding grooming, will be helpful.
While some people suggest honey by mouth can be helpful, there are no validated studies to confirm this. Further, as a scientist who studies the immune response, it seems unlikely that factors within honey would be able to survive the pH of the stomach and somehow translocate to immune tissues and modify responses. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, or that honey isn’t perfectly delicious or is in some way detrimental, but in the absence of blinded studies and a scientifically-valid mechanistic hypothesis, I remain skeptical.
It’s really heartbreaking that the horse riding knocks me on my ass after a lesson, let alone grooming and untacking. I can’t imagine how bad it would be if I had to muck out stalls or organise feed!!