Re: Re: Strangles

["Maggie Mieske" <mmieske@netonecom.net>]

<A person can carry the stuff on their shoes or hands and infect a healthy horse that way. >

 

This is why if there is any question about the health of a horse when we are at a clients to trim/shoe, we use antibacterial wipes, Lysol spray our clothes, shoes, etc. and if it looks really serious, we cancel or reschedule the rest of the day, go home and dump everything into the washer before we even look at our own horses!  It is a major bummer to show up, start trimming a horse and have the client tell us "Oh, yeah, by the way, this horse is on "whatever it is" because he has "such and such" and sometimes it is strangles or a virus.  Kind of screws up a whole day and when our schedule is tight, it's a bugger to have to reschedule especially if the route is one an hour or more from home.  So far, it's only happened a couple of times and people would rather have us not come than chance letting their horse get sick.  We try nowadays to tell people up front, especially the "new" horse owners, that we would rather they cancel if they suspect their horse is sick.  Hopefully, it's sinking in!

Maggie