Now, in the hot Louisiana sun, he is practically falling down - yes, me too.

My question is, should I get testing for him for lyme from Igenex - PCR dna test or Bowen Qribb. I did both for me, but it is about $250 for each.

I don't even know if treatment will help him or not, even if he tests positive.

What should I do? He is suffering. Thanks.

Finally had another vet out and she knew he had lyme. Sent blood to Univ of Maryland and he was positive but he never recovered.

When he first got sick his front leg swelled very badly. I am sure horses are just like everyone else. Some may have swelling some may not... He also had eye problems and lost a ton of weight.

I live Southern Maryland and have found the vets to be just as stupid as doctors. Perfect example is out older dog. She has had spinal problems since contracting lyme.

I kept telling two vets it was lyme causing her spinal problems. Long story short she almost died recently. We took her to an
emergency vet facility, they ran every test in the book including ct scan as they thought it was spinal too.

Well guess what, the new vet found a perfectly healthy dog along with a perfect spine... Sadly I was right. She cannot walk now but is getting a little better on huge doses of doxy and amoxy as well as pool therapy twice per week. This will be her 6th treatment and I seriously doubt she will pull through this.

I asked my vet to test my horse and she wanted to do an Elisa but I insisted on a WB. well, it came back neg but when I called the lab for the bands there was a Lyme specific band. But the horse seems OK and I'm too sick to ever go to the barn so I have not treated him.

One vet told me people and dogs have a high suspectibility to Lyme, horses medium and cats low.

Most of the horses that I know who have lyme presented with migrating lamness- or swollen hocks or migrating body pain.

The normal Lyme testing for horses is quite cheap- $55.00 and it's an ELISA screening of a total count of IgM and IgG antibodies lumped together. Lyme can be sequestered in the horse the same as it is in us, So if you're going to pay for a test, I'd use Igenex.

OR you could just start treating the horse with Doxy - and yes- It's dosed by body weight - so it'll be costly.

There are other (neurological) diseases (like EPM) that'll present with ataxia - but the test for that is a spinal tap, and not something I'd put one of my horses thru.

Horses tolerate Bactrim pretty well, so if he were one of my horses and he was in the shape yours is in- I'd start the doxy and follow up with 21 days of Bactrim AFTER you make sure the horse doesn't have Leptospirosis or some other parasite - there are parasites that can get into the eye, and treatment is tricky- as killing the parasite can cause localized die off in the eye and result in blindness.

This is definitely something you should discuss with your vet - and lets hope he's on the ball.

Barb

We tired to do a spinal tap yrs ago at the beginning of his sx and couldn;t get any fluid. Wouldn't do it now. He is so vulnerable. He may have had EPM. (After all I have babesia and we are doing a parallel thing here.)

Vet comes tomorrow am. WIll ask about lepto... He already oked the lyme test.