Rosie, the drama queen in every way

Vaccination day was Monday, May 9.  Babe and Jerry were very well behaved, as usual.  Rosie is a drama queen in every way--even physically.  She has absolutely NO pain tolerance and pretty much exploded when the needles were put in.  I felt horrible because she kept looking at me like "Why are you letting them do this to me??!!!"  But, she got through it and I breathed a sigh of relief.  Her reaction really didn't surprise me because she freaked out last year, partly from fear and partly from "needles hurt!"


Babe and Jerry didn't have any physical reaction to vaccinations.  But Rosie had a reaction to the 3-way combo with West Nile.  By the next morning, she had a bump on her neck where the combo was given and a very sore neck.  Actually, her whole body looked stiff and sore.  She hung her head and looked so sad.  She was very reluctant to move and took very short steps with the leg on the vaccination side, almost dragging it along as she walked at a snails pace. 


This little one is my baby, my "golden ray of sunshine" girl, and my horsie soul mate.  As much as we are told we shouldn't play favorites with our "children," I admit she is mine.  I love this little horse like crazy.  It was awful watching her struggle.  I contacted my vet and started her on 1/4 gram of flavored bute powder that I already had for Babe's arthritis twice a day.  Luckily, my little princess still had a voracious appetite and didn't even blink at the addition of the bute to her mini-sized portion of grain, which Babe will tell you smells nice and fruity but still tastes a little nasty. 


The bute helped some but she was still very uncomfortable.  Rosie was especially needy and cuddly during this time--very much like a sick child.  I pulled up a chair in her paddock and sat with her for an hour or more at a time.  I gave her lots of scratches and massage, as well as holding her head and telling her everything would be OK.  This may sound a little crazy, but she's quite different than the average horse about things like this--she LOVES having her head held and cuddled.  Even when she was still overcoming her fear of me when I first brought her home, she loved having her head held.  She found it comforting.  This quality of hers is especially endearing.


I kept in close contact with my vet and also discussed it with friends.  Along with the wonderful support from friends that I appreciated so much, I also heard about horror stories of the minority of vaccination reactions that resulted in death or serious illness.  There were a lot of mini owners telling me their minis experienced similar reactions like Rosie was having and it passed within a few days to a week.  Being so emotionally invested, I couldn't help but worry that Rosie would be one of the horror stories.  It took everything I had to control those worries and tell myself over and over that she would get better and everything would be fine. 


Interestingly, my vet told me that she had discovered other clinicians reporting the same reaction from vaccine from the same lot in four other horses that week.  They have informed the manufacturer.  I doubt I'll ever know if there was something wrong with the batch.  I guess it doesn't really matter.


I finally saw real improvement last evening, Thursday, May 12.  She was moving more freely--pretty much normally.  She still didn't move her head side to side much but she was raising it higher than she had been and looked comfortable grazing, raising her head to look at something, and then lowering it again to continue grazing.  The swelling had gone down.  She was much brighter looking.  I felt so much better.


This morning (Friday, May 13), she is about 90% back to normal.  Still not wanting to move her head side to side very much, still not quite as cocky and as bossy with Jerry as she usually is ... but definitely headed in the right direction.  The bump on her neck is now a small hard knot about the size of a dime.  I am finally breathing regular breaths and believing she will be OK with no lasting effects. 


I talked with my vet and we will work on a plan for next year--maybe splitting up the vaccines on different days?  Maybe pre-medicating her?  Something, anything, to try to prevent this from happening again.  Even if the vaccine lot did have a problem and next years batch is perfectly fine, minis do seem to be more prone to vaccine reactions than big horses, and I want to do whatever possible to prevent it from happening again.

UPDATE evening 5/13: 

Rosie has had a minor set back. She is still acting pretty well and bright eyed, but the bump on her neck at the injection site is larger this evening and she didn't want me to mess with it. I called the on-call vet who said "Oh, we've been talking about Rosie a lot this week, so I'm familiar with her case." We talked some more about the larger bump and decided to put her on an antibiotic and give her Banamine for a couple more days. Met him between his other farm visits earlier this evening and picked up the medicine. Rosie ate everything in some grain--it helps to have a piggy pony! I'm hoping things will be back to absolute normal in a few more days and we can put all this behind us. Stressful!!