Ehrlichiosis

I got a phone call from my barn owner this morning at 8am, which is never a good thing. Lucy has been stocked up in her hind legs the past couple days, but another boarder said they had heard her kicking the stall wall because a new mare is next to her, and so I chalked it up to being related to the kicking. I rode her yesterday and as you can see in this video, she was very quiet. Like, so quiet that I wondered if she was feeling ok. She ate her dinner fine and was totally sound during our ride, but this morning all four legs were very swollen and warm, and her feet were warm also. She looked like crap, and my barn owner said that although she ate her breakfast, she was so lethargic that she didn't even want to leave her stall to go out to the paddock, which is totally unlike her! Usually she's excited to go out every morning.

I got over to the barn asap and we took Lucy's temp, which was 102.5 degrees F. Soo of course this warranted an emergency call to the vet on a Saturday. I explained all the symptoms to the vet on the phone and she immediately thought it was Ehrliciosis, a tick-borne bacterial infection that attacks the white blood cells. That's what my barn manager had thought it was, too. She recommended coming out to look at Lucy, because she would most likely need to go on antibiotics. In the mean time, she told me to give L two grams of bute.

She was out at the barn within the hour, and checked Lucy's vital signs. Her temp was down to 101 deg. F, which was good news. The vet gave Lucy 200mL IV antibiotics to kick off the treatment and hopefully get her feeling better, and then she left a bottle of Doxycycline for me to give over the next five days. Lucy also has to get bute 2x a day to keep the fever down.

Here is what her legs looked like:



I left the barn after the vet was done to run some errands, and went back around 3:30 to feed Lucy dinner and check on her. I also cold-hosed her legs and that seemed to help a lot to bring the swelling down, but she was still very tired-looking. She perked up for dinner, at least:

Poor pony :(