Surviving a Bout of Strangles

Strangles is a disease which is very prevalent in the lower mainland. We have been through several outbreaks over the years. Every time there is an attack people get almost hysterical, make unfounded accusations against the newest person to arrive at the barn and generally over-react to a massive degree. The emotional reaction to something which is really just an occurence of a very simple problem is truly amazing. It's as if your horse coming down with strangles were a comment on your worth as a human being.

All the panic is unneccessary, folks. Strangles is not usually a serious threat to your horse. You won't be riding for a while and the symptoms are pretty gross, but in the long run the biggest effect will be the inconvenience of the quarantine the vet will probably put on your barn.

Yes, there is some. Once your horse has survived strangles he won't come down with it again. He's immune. You don't have to worry, get it?

Believe me when I say that this simple piece of knowledge makes a tremendous difference to your mindset. Hopefully, you will feel benevolent to the people who haven't dealt with the problem before. If you do, you can provide a tremendous amount of support and encouragement to owners who haven't dealt with this problem. Calm them down. Help them do a few simple things and all will be well.

Strangles is simply a strep infection, specificly streptococcus equii. It enters through the nose, makes a quick tour of the tonsils and eventually settles in the glands under the horses jaw causing an abcess. The glands swell and this swelling may have an effect on the breathing, which is where the word strangles comes from.

That only happens in extreme instances. In most cases what you will be dealing with is a fever, sometimes a cough, and lots of thick, nasal discharge. The horse will be cranky and may stop eating until the fever goes down. Needless to say, you won't be doing any riding during this period.

There is one really bad variant of strangles called bastard strangles. Instead of being restricted to the throat the infection spreads throughout the body. This is extremely dangerous and has a high mortality.

One of the most common things you will hear about strangles is that it is an airborne disease and gets blown from barn to barn on the wind.This is absolutely untrue. True airborne diseases are extremely rare and strangles is not one of them. Period. No matter what your uncle Willy or your coach tells you.

Strangles is strictly a contact disease. Snot from an infected horse has to get into the throat of a healthy one. The coughing that sometimes accompanies the other symptoms can blow droplets around for a few feet. The main vector for spreading this disease is direct nose to nose contact between horses or owners moving from horse to horse touching them as they go.

Prevention of strangles is a nearly impossible task. The only way you might prevent it is if your horses are kept in total isolation from others, you never visit any other barns and your barn is newly built. This is a very durable bug. Most disinfectants don't work, even bleach water. Also, strangles penetrates into wood and can lie dormant for years before flaring up again. This is why I said your barn would need to be new and never have had an infected horse in it.

If you are in a shared barn and an outbreak starts you might as well forget it. You can drive yourself nuts sterilizing and steaming in order to prevent something that isn't really that big a deal. The name is worse than the illness.

Treatment consists mostly of keeping the horse comfortable and letting things run their course. Feed him stuff he likes to keep him eating and give him lots of fresh water. Whether you need a vet or not depends on how bad the fever gets and how frightened you are of the swollen glands. If the vet does come he'll dose the horse with anti-biotics and tell you to do what I just described.

Most of this stuff you can do yourself once you learn how. You can administer your own course of anti-biotics. Warm compresses can be applied to the swollen glands. This will bring the swelling to a head. Sometimes the swellings need to be lanced. You can even do this yourself. Just be sure the swellings are far enough advanced. They get very hard, the hair falls off the infected areas and sometimes fluid oozes from the nodule. That's the time to cut. Usually, though, the swelling either recedes or the abcesses break open on their own and save you the trouble.

The idea of cutting abcesses open seems like it would be a big deal, but again, it's harder on the owner than it is on the horse. A horse in our barn had this done yesterday and was back to eating within about 20 minutes. My own experience with infections I've had shows that the relief from the pressure in the abcesses is much greater than the minor pain of lancing.

A caution about anti-biotics is in order: if you don't really need them don't administer them. Overuse of anti-biotics in horses is just as bad as prescribing them by reflex to people and could lead to the development of a resistant form of the disease you are trying to treat. Then we are all in big trouble.