A few dollars vs. thousands of dollars, or total loss? Do you sometimes wonder if horse owners should be made to act more like car owners? For cars, it’s mandated that you must have insurance to protect you, and the people around you. Bad things happen. You aren’t always in control. The same is true for your horses. Except in the case of horses, your insurance often comes from a bottle and syringe in the form of vaccinations. Some work really well, and some don’t work very well at all. Every horse in North America should be vaccinated against rabies and tetanus. Period. Don’t have reports of many rabid wild animals in your area? It just takes one. Never seen a case of tetanus? Keep watching.

In this day when many horse owners have never seen the ravages of some diseases that used to be common in our grandparents’ time, there sometimes is the mistaken thought that the potential side effects of vaccinations–and even the vaccinations themselves–are worse than the disease.

I’ve seen a horse with rabies. Fortunately, it was the “dumb” form rather than the “furious” form. Unfortunately, the horse initially was thought by his owner to have EPM. The vets at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee in Lexington, Ky., however, didn’t take any chances, and the horse was quarantined and proper precautions taken.

If that had been my horse on my farm, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about opening his mouth and taking a look and doing a cursory exam prior to the vet arriving. And I would have been exposed to rabies. The horse would still be dead, I would be taking shots, and rabies might have spread to my family or other animals