On the Line

“If one of them have got it, then ten of them have got it now, and if one of them gets out . . . we have got a very interesting problem!” Dustin Hoffman, “Outbreak”, 1995

That very interesting problem was highly dramatized in Outbreak, a gem of a movie about an African monkey carrying a highly contagious flesh-eating disease that landed in the U.S. and caused an outbreak that threatened the existence of a small town, of the country, and of the very world we live in.

Did I already say highly dramatized?

Luckily, the recent EHV-1 outbreak that started at a cutting horse show in Utah has not reached such epic proportions. Veterinarians across the country have swooped in much like Dustin Hoffman and his co-star Cuba Gooding Jr. swooped in on their helicopter, to save the day at barns and vet hospitals nationwide.

The very serious Equine Herpes Virus 1, of which small outbreaks occur each year in the United States, became national news when a horse at the cutting show contracted the disease, but did not show signs early enough to prevent his handlers from limiting his contact with other horses.  The show ended, the 300 or so horses at the venue scattered to their home states, and “Outbreak”!

But before anyone can say hazmat suit, vets have been at work following the trail of the outbreak, no doubt making phone calls, tracking entries from the show, and generally doing what vets do best – staying calm and solving problems.

An official tally of confirmed cases is here, more information is here and here.

However. EHV outbreaks have happened before, and they will happen again. That’s not a sentence meant to stoke fear, but rather, to make us ask ourselves – how can we do better?

A contagious disease is as serious as the speed at which it spreads. In a perfect world, information on the Utah horses, their home states, owner contact information, competition history and even entries to their upcoming shows would have been instantly available to vets and officials.

As it is now, paper entry forms were all the vets had to work with. To complicate things, a horse sale was held during the show, and as those horses changed hands and left for new homes, contacting their new owners became more complicated.

Just saying...

It’s simply taken time for vets to know exactly where each horse at the cutting show ended up afterwards, and in the meantime the outbreak has spread. Social media, news sites and bloggers (guilty) took the story and ran with it. Horses in unaffected states clear across the country were suddenly restricted.  And if Dustin Hoffman learned anything in Outbreak, it was that it’s rather difficult to control fear.

When horse owners tell their farriers, chiropractors, and vets to put off scheduled appointments until the risk passes, the industry suffers. When trainers that are hundreds of miles away from an affected area make last minute, panicky decisions to pull out of a event that’s not necessarily affected by the outbreak, that show suffers. And when events are canceled to help stem the spread of a disease, the local economy suffers.

Could universal microchipping of our horses help control or prevent a similar outbreak? This blogger thinks so. It’s hard to believe that in a world where our smartphones can scan a QR Code on a billboard and send information straight to the palm of our hand, better record keeping isn’t already in place.

Modern technology at work.

In a perfect world, scanning horses when they arrive at shows or sales, instantly knowing their histories and having relevant contact information on hand would make a critical difference when every minute matters in tracking down horses and notifying owners.

Universal microchipping has many potential benefits, as noted by fellow Sidelines blogger, Dr. Alex Emerson in his recent post on the subject. Pooled data to help veterinarians see how certain footings effect performance over spans of several years…tracking the performance successes of famous breeding stallions. Knowing without a shadow of a doubt the complete medical history of that horse you’re thinking about buying. Dr. Emerson describes these and other ways that microchipping can help vets much more eloquently than I ever could, so click over and read his post here.

Is this all a little too Big Brother for your taste? So be it. In a world of smartphones and cars with gps chips, web-based records and yes, facebook, rest assured that Big Brother already knows exactly where you are. But it does not know where your horse is.

Maybe it’s time to change that?