Sometimes you never know what’s going to set a horse off. In a physical ailment sort of way, I mean.

We work with sensitive creatures–intricately built individuals who each handle management techniques and practices very differently. For example, my mom encountered a scenario with her Belgian/Quarter Horse mare (a horse that she adopted from a PMU farm as a filly) a few weeks ago. My family lives in Central Virginia, where they are having The Mother of All Tick Seasons. We’ve always had ticks on our hillside. I remember mom finding a tick crawling on me in church one Sunday and she held it, pinched, between her index finger and thumb until the service was over. (Ah, the hazards of rural life. I’m lucky to have a mom who isn’t fearful of arthropods.)

Mom watches the health status of each of her horses very closely and it’s a good thing: one particular day in early April, she noticed dozens of ticks on Honey, and the mare was covered in welts. The poor mare–she must have wallowed in a tick colony! Mom removed every tick she could find, the welts disappeared, and a few days later she applied a tick treatment, with no resulting skin drama. A few weeks later, the veterinarian gave spring vaccinations, with exception of one vaccine Mom had ordered and was going to give later. Again, no problems.

But when Mom gave the mare her final spring vaccine, Honey stopped sweating. Just like that. Done. And it wasn’t exactly cool and breezy that particular week. Her skin again erupted into hives, and her knees were swollen this time around. After a week at our veterinarian’s farm, a round of antihistamines, steroids, and several other approaches, Honey’s hives improved, and she began sweating again, but everyone was pretty puzzled. Our vet had taken a skin biopsy and sent it off for analysis; from what I understand, it was inconclusive