...it was done as I picked the horse up.
(oversight on our part) I had it written in a contract if the test came back
positive, she would refund money, and take horse
back...
Uh, that defeats the entire point of having a Coggins. If the
test comes back positive two, three, five days later, it means
that any other horses you have or that are stabled anywhere
near the positive horse must now be presumed to have been
exposed and must undergo quarantine for however many
months it takes (three? six?) for antibodies to show or
conclusively *not* show in their blood. Since positive
Coggins have to be reported, your state's animal health
officials are going to come looking for that horse, and
there isn't going to be anyway to hide from the consequences.
Swamp fever is no joke. It is only treated as a joke because
the Coggins requirement has done a good job of stopping
the spread of the disease. Like polio vaccines.
I researched all this in Massachusetts when the question came
up for me, as a ride manager, just how much trouble we would
be in if the Mass Dept. of Animal Health did a "surprise raid"
on our trail ride and discovered that we really weren't checking
for Coggins certificates at our rides. It got real unfunny real
quick. Swamp fever spreads by insect bites--the horsefly
(mosquito?) bites the infected horse, then buzzes over and bites
the uninfected horse. The older vets remembered the last
outbreak
in Massachusetts 20 or 30 years ago and said that it spread
up one valley like wildfire, ported entirely by the insects going
from barn to barn. They also said it was still fairly
common in Texas, Flordia, and Tennessee and they had to
be extra cautious of horses imported from those states.
