It’s that good news/bad news situation….
9 February 2016
So first the bad news – the horse we euthanized on Sunday afternoon tested
positive for Equine Herpes Virus-1 and the Empire West stabling will continue
under strict quarantine conditions. The good news is that the strain of the virus is
the non-neuropathic variety and thus not quite as concerning as the neuropathic
strain we faced a few years back. This is not to say we are totally out of the
woods. The better news is that given the fact that this was a school horse and not
part of the general tournament playing population and the fact that she was as far
away from the other horses in that stabling area as she could be, only that stabling
area will be placed under a California State Dept. of Food and Agriculture
quarantine for 14 days. Of course that is dependent on the fact that we have no
other cases show up. Polo will continue as normal and travel to all other areas of
the club and surrounding ranches will not be restricted. At this time no restrictions
on travel of horses to and from the HITS show will be placed.
I will have more to come on this a bit later, but now I have a lot of calls to make.
All of us should continue to take temperatures daily on our horses and report any
horse to me that has any kind of depressed attitude or incoordination or has a fever
over 102.0 F. Thank you for your help and cooperation and let’s hope for a quick
return to action to those players and horses affected. For further enlightenment on
the disease process of EHV, please see this article on the web –
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/animal_health/pdfs/Equine_EHMbrochure.pdf
Michael Manno, DVM, MS
San Dieguito Equine Group
760-591-9952