West Niles KillsI'm desperately trying to get my story out there to anyone who will listen. I live in St. Clair County in South East Michigan. What I have learned in the last couple of weeks through my personal experience with WNV is that no one seems to want to talk about just how many positive West Nile Virus cases there are out there in horses. I have contacted numerous tv and newspapers and the only paper who would run a story was the Times Herald in Port Huron. Here's my story.... Last Wednesday, August 21st I noticed my 7 year old Throughbred was a little lethargic. He gets that way sometimes, so I didn't worry. By 11:00 his ears started to twitch and he started to drool a bit. I noticed he had trouble eating. He kept trying, but It just wouldn't go down his throat. I called the vet and he happened to be down the street. He came, took blood, and said he'd get back with me in 5-7 days. (He's no longer my vet). Two hours later the symptoms were becoming more severe. West Nile was the furthest from my mind and the vet said in the spring for all of us not to worry about it and that it was no where around here. I put Charlie on the trailer and started to Michigan State University. By the time I got there, he could hardly walk. They put him in a padded stall and started iv's. That's where I found it was possible WNV and at that point there had already been 3 confirmed cases and 16 possible pending blood tests according to Michigan Dept. of Ag. Two horses had already been to MSU and treated and sent home. Charlie was the third. By Sunday, Charlie started to get better. In the meantime, a standardbred came in with it and another horse came in who was down in the trailer and the owners euthinized him. That made 5. Monday morning two more came in. Tuesday, Charlie had a seizure in his stall and never got back up. By Thursday, he was so far gone I had to let him go. I was told that two more possible had come in and as of yesterday, there were 8 cases in MSU being treated. I have since talked to three people in my area who had horses that had seizures in the pasture and were put down and they said their symptoms looked exactly like I described. This virus is out there and it's a lot bigger than we think. Charlie was my absolute best friend and my riding partner. I miss him terribly every day. I never dreamed in a million years this would happen, since we are so paranoid already about mosquitoes and we do everything we can to keep them down. And our vets around here seem to choose to not be educated on this virus. I received an email from someone three miles from me whose horse showed distorted facial symptoms like Charlie and her vet treated him for colic and never took blood. He died three days later. Please pass this on to anyone you know. If I can somehow help save one horse, Charlie's death won't be completely in vain.
Thank You,
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