20/11/2025
Just stay home for awhile! Prevent the spread!
EHV should have killed my horse in 2023. It wasn’t even the neurologic strain. He went recumbent and dropped 300 pounds in two weeks from EHV-2 and EHV-5. I still consider it divine intervention that he, somehow, survived.
Nothing compares to watching your own horse look more dead than alive. His second day in the hospital (shown in that photo), I told the vet if he wasn't dramatically better by morning, I would let him rest. That’s how close we came.
So let me make this as blunt as possible: If you are in an affected area and still hauling out…still competing…still hosting shows as if nothing is happening…
You are not just risking your horse.
You are risking every horse you come into contact with: your friend’s retired heart horse, your daughter’s pony, the teenager’s first horse she spent years saving for, the barn’s sweetest old gelding, someone’s emotional support animal, someone’s once-in-a-lifetime partner.
All of them.
You are choosing money over the very real possibility of watching any of those horses collapse, suffer, and fight for their life.
If you’re willing to take that risk, with a strain seemingly deadlier and more contagious than ever before... Your choice to “just go to one show” will be the reason someone else has to bury their best friend.
