Travel companions

That spring, Francesca made some small strides. Her weight stabilized (granted, she was getting high-protein/low-starch grain and beet pulp twice a day) and her mental state seemed to level out as well. I could actually get her to stand still for more than 5 seconds at a time and I felt as though she was graining trust in me. Perhaps all of the care-taking and time spent on the ground with her was paying off.

While grooming her in the paddock one day, I noticed that Francesca's topline was very sore near her sacrum. She shrank away from my touch, and I decided to have the chiropractor out. Before Dr. Blake even adjusted anything, he checked some of her acupressure points, which she really reacted to. He said that her reaction was typical in horses he had treated for EPM. Given her history, we decided to go ahead and start treatment on Francesca.

The first week involved IM injections in her rump (she was braver than I was about it) and the next few weeks required dosing her twice daily with a combination of dissolved sulfa tablets and a paste that is used to treat malaria in humans. The sulfa dose was huge and she understably disliked the procedure. The tiny amount of paste was equally as difficult to administer because she became skilled at flicking it out of her mouth, and she wasn't fooled by a paste-covered horse treat. I eventually ended up mixing the sulfa and the paste in with her feed and top-dressing it with molasses-sweetened water, watching like a hawk to make sure she ate every grain. It was a routine I was thankful to see end.

Around this time, I had Francesca's teeth done by a denstist who is one of the few in the country trained to use the type of hand tools he uses. It was during this appointment that I met Lisa Lancaster, a farrier and newly-graduated vet student. She was spending the summer observing different vets in the area before starting her own practice back in Denver. I learned that Lisa's expertise was in hoof pathology, and so we scrutinized Francesca's feet. I also asked about her thoughts on vaccinations and alternative medicine, and I was intrigued to find that she leaned to the more "unconventional" side of things. Right away, I could tell that Lisa was a good person to know.

The more I talked with Lisa, the more I learned from her. She took over the care of Francesca's feet and showed me how to rasp flares. Her theories behind not only the questionable efficacy of vaccines but the potential danger of using them really pushed me to do more research on the subject. With Francesca's feared neurological issues, Lisa said that there was a possibility that the West Nile Virus vaccine could actually compound the situation. But she also stressed that whether to vaccinate or not was something she left up to the horse owner. My gut told me to not further compromise an already compromised system.

To help support Francesca's immune system, Lisa suggested a product called Transfer Factor. It was expensive, but she had had success managing her horse's Cushing's Disease with it, so I figured it was worth a try. I put Francesca on this for a few months and I do think she benefitted from it. It's hard to know whether it was that or the EPM treatment or just nature taking its course, but over time her EPM symptoms completely abated, with the exception of the undiagnosed unsoundness. That was still a mystery to be solved.