The tetracyclines, as a class of drugs, have significant antiinflammatory properties in addition to their anti-bacterial effects.
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In addition ( as mentioned somewhere above) it could be grass induced as well.
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the question is - have ALL these horses tested positive for Lyme.
what does that mean? The Lyme titer testing at Cornell is pretty darn reliable, including for which type of exposure there is - acute, chronic, vaccinated. What it can’t do though is necessarily see infection if it’s too new, which happens with anaplasmosis too, at some point the antibodies need a little time to build to be seen in a test.
I would MUCH more assume that’s because it’s something like anaplasmosis, not Lyme.
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I was on doxy for my rheumatoid arthritis for awhile. It did help. Most people think I’m nuts when I tell them that and think I must be mistaken, lol. Nope!
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I did minocycline for my RA. It worked pretty well for a few years. I had to make sure to take probiotics with it, and it made me sun sensitive, but otherwise caused no problems. And I had no infections of any kind while I was on it.
Rebecca
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OP, I understand your concerns. We lost a horse several years ago due to a faulty veterinary protocol. And my mother (75) recently wound up with a severe respiratory infection because of the antiobiotic protocol her provider was following. Veterinarians and doctors are people, too, and they can make mistakes. It’s especially difficult when medicine seems to be trending towards treating an average rather than individuals. I know there are reasons behind this method, but I wish it would return to an emphasis on individual care.
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Exactly.
I had a friend who’s horse was sick for years because listened to vets who insisted “horses don’t get Lyme.’ Eventually she treated for Lyme and the horse (somewhat) turned around. The horse was for ever a high maintenance flower, but if she had treated Lyme from day 1 she could have spared herself (and horse) and lot of misery and $.
I also know a few horse owners who had to endure IV protocol of antibiotics because Lyme was not treated aggressively enough soon enough.
I never recommend anyone wait on treating suspected Lyme. Never.
The time it takes to get the test result =/= vets who insisted “horses don’t get Lyme.’ Eventually she treated for Lyme … Or Lyme was not treated aggressively enough soon enough.
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Again, you haven’t said how this should be “diagnosed?” What does “suspected Lyme” look like if there is no fever? Mild lameness? That can wait 5 days for a test result. This is kind of a silly issue in 2023. The vast majority of vets know that horses get Lyme disease, and have access to reliable testing labs with results in 3-7 days or so. It’s not like we’re talking 30 days or more.
Otherwise every laminitis, poor trim, spring grass, EPM, arthritis, and 100 other mild injuries would get treated as suspected Lyme.
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I am thinking some wires were crossed there, a misunderstanding happened, as there is no vet that would not have known that horses do get infected from all kinds of insect bites, including with Lyme.
That is standard vet knowledge.
Maybe the vet didn’t meant they didn’t, but that under some circumstanced as those the talk was about, maybe not so apt to?
Over half a century ago, our old vet told us, when we had a white foal from a buckskin mare bred to a palomino stallion, that didn’t survive, not to breed again horses with two recessive genes, that is what caused it.
Today we know that the OWLS gene, that can be tested for, is what causes lethal white foal syndrome, not two recessive ones:
I know some times vets don’t have the right information, but in the case of horses and Lyme and a vet believing that “all horses don’t catch it”, I tend to think perhaps that was not quite what the vet meant.
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Twenty years ago, maybe though.
Which is not helpful to add to a Convo about a sick horse in 2023
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Unfortunately no, that isn’t the case. There are absolutely still vets who think horses don’t get Lyme 
Much fewer than there used to be, thankfully, but given that there are still vets who tube deworm horses because that’s the “best” way, it shouldn’t be a surprise that old school vets still operate under old school ideas.
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Curious, what do you mean by “tube deworm”?
Deworming performed by a vet, using a stomach tube.
I know some people who think it’s more effective than paste dewormers because the old vet who still likes to do it that way says so.
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As Night_Flight said, it’s deworming via NG tube
It used to be the ONLY way to effectively deworm horses, because the chemical used at the time was too caustic to give orally.
Once ivermectin was invented, it was game on for paste deworming.
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I had this done in the 1970s. There is no point whatsoever to do it today. NG tube is not trauma free. We used to just twitch them and shove it in. No tranqs. The paste wormer is much more civilized and if current horsey knew what old horsey put up with, she wouldn’t complain so fiercely about paste tubes.
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I spent my first two years in practice working on talking my clients out of tube deworming.
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I think the idea that the old way was somehow better was also reinforced by the deworming laws in the province this vet is practicing in; you can only purchase dewormer paste through a vet (you cannot buy it at feed stores or tack stores), so if you’re going to have to pay the vet the marked-up price of $30/tube of paste anyway, a lot of barns seemed to think it was better just to have the vet tube deworm when he came to do the shots, and get what seemed like more bang for their buck.
Some things take a long time to die out…
Holy crap I didn’t know that was ever a thing. I was kinda panicking that there’s some new way besides a tube of paste now that we are supposed to do but I somehow missed.
