All joking aside, it is also a common disease in horses and we officially have a horse that was diagnosed with it last week. She will be on some maintenance anti-inflammatory drugs. For the short term she is also on some injectable steroids (I have learned how to give a horse a shot now) and some pain medicine. The trip to the vet was traumatic because she had an accident while the vet was checking her out and cut her leg bad.
So now we are a week from the diagnosis and have all this medicine to get down her throat. She DOES NOT want to take it. Do you know how hard it is to give a horse medicine if she doesn't want it... let me just tell you, it is much harder than a child, dog, or cat! After many failed tries with the medicine, we finally are being successful mixing it with apple sauce and squirting it down her throat.
The cuts that occurred at the vet have now gotten infected and she needs hydro therapy like the baby goat did. We also need to keep the flies off of her... so you know what that means... moving her into the house.
... gotcha .... we did not move her into the house! (I bet at least one person that read that believed we would have done that). But we did have to setup a temporary fence up at the house so it was easy to hose her wound down twice a day doing the therapy. The prognosis is that during the worst months - spring and summer - she will need the maintenance drug. As long as it is all under control, she is still ridable.
My new view from the deck:
