ve the equipment you need with you and that you know what is a normal temperature for your horse," Dr. Traub-Dargatz adds.
- Be sure his vaccinations are up to date. (Read more about the role of vaccinations in "How Vaccination Helps" below.)
- Don't let your horse drink from community water troughs (think germ soup). Give him his own bucket, and don't share it.
- Don't share equipment. Bring your own pitchfork and other gear. Keep your horse's grooming equipment and tack separate from others and don't wipe slobber, dirt or discharge off his muzzle with a community rag. "Use a paper towel and put it in the trash," Dr. Traub-Dargatz says.
- Minimize your horse's contact with horses and people outside his home group. Don't let him socialize nose-to-nose with other horses, and discourage visitors from petting him. "If they've had direct contact with other horses, they could spread disease," says Dr. Traub-Dargatz.
- Haul with horses from your barn and in your own trailer, if you can. "If he'll be in a mixed load with horses from other barns, ask about their health status," Dr. Traub-Dargatz says. Be sure the trailer was cleaned and disinfected after the last use.
- Clean your hands before and after you handle your horse. If soap and water aren't handy, use alcohol-based hand gel.
- When you return home, continue to monitor your horse's health. "Take his temperature daily for a week or two," Dr. Traub-Dargatz advises. If he picked up an infection despite all your efforts, you'll want to spot it quickly. Contact your veterinarian promptly and ask that your horse be examined and, if indicated, tested to determine the cause of his signs.
How Vaccination Helps
|Vaccination helps protect your horse by boosting his ability to fight infection and by reducing the spread of disease through his herd.
Your veterinarian can help you decide which shots your horse should get and when. Some vaccines are considered "core," recommended for most horses; others are optional, based on risks of infection. A horse who goes to shows or other events where he'll encounter horses from other barns needs protection against diseases that spread from horse to horse. Horses who stay home need this protection, too, if other horses could bring infection onto the farm. This can happen right under your nose because horses can be latent carriers of some pathogens (including EHV), harboring them and sometimes shedding them without showing signs.
- Vaccines trigger an immune response to specific pathogens—viruses, bacteria and other disease-causing organisms—without causing disease. If the real deal shows up later, your horse can mount a faster and more powerful defense because his immune system is primed for it.
- When most horses in a given population are vaccinated, disease has less opportunity to spread. All the horses in the group gain a measure of protection from this.
Is vaccination enough to prevent disease in all horses who receive it? For some diseases the answer is no, but that doesn't mean you should skip vaccinations. A vaccinated horse may get sick, but the course of his disease is likely to be less severe. And vaccination can still help control the spread of disease through a population.
EHV is especially challenging. "As far as I know, none of the EHV vaccines prevent the initial infection that can lead to latency," says Dr. Traub-Dargatz. But vaccination makes sense for high-risk groups like show horses and broodmares, she says. It may not prevent initial infection or end transmission risk, but viral shedding may be less within a population of vaccinated horses. "We don't have a vaccine with a label claim for preventing the neurological form of this disease, but we don't know that having a well-vaccinated population does not reduce the risk of this form. So we can't say vaccinate and don't worry, but at a population level we still have reason to recommend vaccination."
Vaccination isn't the only line of defense, she adds: "We believe reactivation and shedding may occur with stress, so we can reduce risk by reducing stress." Hauling horses with c