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(The following text was mailed to me anonymously on 24 January 2003)

There is so much written about the culicoides allergies in Icelandic horses that I think when a horse begins to exhibit allergic symptoms, it is often assumed to be the "curse of the culicoides" and the hand-wringing begins. This story perhaps puts a different perspective on the problem. The first Icelandic horse that we bought for my husband was unaffected, so it was not something that I focused on when I began to look for one for myself. In March of 2001 I found a beautiful black gelding that had been imported the previous November. He was a svartur and absolutely stunning. I left him at the farm to finish his training and ended up taking him after we returned from Spain in late July. He was in beautiful condition and showed no symptoms of allergies.

That fall I began to notice a few lesions along his mid-line. We had been using Strongid C daily and purge worming quarterly, rotating between Ivermectin and Quest. I read that there was a particular parasite that could cause those symptoms during migration and that parasite was not affected by Quest. I decided to eliminate that product from the purge program and while I continued the Strongid C, I went to purge worming with Ivermectin every two months, which with the exception of the Strongid C, was the program used at the farm where we bought him. The lesions disappeared.

Everything was fine until late May 2002 after we returned from a ride in New York. I came home one day to find my horse repeatedly throwing himself down in his stall and rolling. When he was standing, he would kick and bite at his belly constantly. I was sure he had colicked and called the vet immediately. The vet came and although his gut was barely working, it was due to the frenzy he had worked himself into because he was so intensely itchy. To give you an idea, the vet said he had never before seen a horse that bad and said even if I had tried to explain it on the telephone, he still would not have been able to envision it. Fortunately, I had just changed vets and this one had the foresight to draw blood samples for an ELISA allergy profile before he administered the steroid injection, but to calm the horse that day he also had to administer banamine to calm the gut and finally a sedative to calm the horse.

It was a horrible summer. As we waited for the allergy profile results, we tried a number of things. I told the vet about the few lesions the previous fall and that when I changed the worming program that the lesions seemed to heal. He had me purge worm the horse once a week for five weeks just in case this was due to the migrating parasite. It was not. I read several articles on culicoides and found that they were unaffected by the traditional equine insect repellants and that they were equally effective inside or outside of the stable, but that they did not like oily products and they could not fly particularly well. I literally bought 4 1/2 GALLONS of Avon Skin So Soft in 24oz. bottles to mix with the insect spray and kept my horse in his stall with both the ceiling fans and stanchion fans running at high speed. It did not help. He was desperate to rub on anything and could manage to peel the skin from his face on the plastic edge of his water bucket or by rubbing the flat edge of the metal corner trims in his stall. His mane began to look like I had hogged it and he bit wounds into the front of his chest, on his elbows and all along his abdomen. I bought Cortaid by the bags full and it barely gave him temporary relief.

Finally the results came back and while he was borderline reactive to inhaling spores of nearly everything that had leaves in addition to some molds, he tested on the low side of normal to culicoides. The only single thing he showed to be absolutely allergic to was something called sheep sorrel, which I found later is a pasture weed the farmers around here refer to as dock. At the time, I had no idea what that even was, but living in the woods, we certainly had nearly every variety of tree that bothered him either in or directly adjacent to his pasture areas. The vet felt that the cumulative results of so many borderline exposures would have been enough to push his immune system over the edge to the frenzied state it seemed to be in.

We ordered the desensitizing serums, which take forever to make. It was another month before the serums arrived and they are not something that you see immediate results from. He had finally improved enough that when we were invited to another group Icelandic Horse ride in late September, we accepted. Unfortunately, the added stimulation of riding through the early fall pollens in their fields and woods caused him to relapse, although he has never gotten as bad as the initial explosion again. It was only in talking to my human friends that had gone through allergy desensitizing shots that kept me on track with the injection schedule. They all consistently told me that the shots DO work, but they take a while. As late as November/December, my horse still had some lesions on his belly, elbows and face, although the hair had returned along his crest and his mane had a couple of inches of regrowth.

In late November, we had an animal communicator here. I'm not totally convinced that I wholly believe in the concept, but I try to be open to new things. I look for results, no matter what the source. The one thing we did decide to do after her "consulting" with all four of our horses was to stop the Strongid C. She said that she had seen and heard of a number of instances where the constant stress on the horse's system of having to process the toxins in the Strongid C caused allergic-type reactions to other stimuli. The Strongid C also seemed to be the primary difference in the diet of this horse between the farm where we bought him and what we were feeding. I will tell you that this horse has since healed totally, but that is not to say that it could not be a coincidence. My vet tells me that the manufacturer claims that the Strongid C is designed so that the toxins are not absorbed into the system and only affect the parasite, although I'm not sure that makes sense to me. I also stopped using the product after several months of desensitizing injections at a time when the reactive agents were at an all-time low, so the healing may have occurred equally with or without the Strongid C. At this time, however, I do not intend to reintroduce the product to test it.

Finally, I do have evidence that the desensitizing shots are, in fact, working. During the summer, as we were testing hay prior to a delivery, we had gotten a few bales that contained some of the dock/sheep sorrel. At the time, I still didn't know what it was, but I did know that as soon as my horse smelled it, he immediately became much more itchy. I pulled the flakes from his stall and returned the unopened bales to the dealer with samples of the offending weed. That's when I learned what it was. I was able to get a load delivered without the weed and we were fine in that respect for the rest of the summer. Unfortunately, our small farm is not particularly accessible to hay deliveries once we get snow and with the early snow this year, I couldn't be as choosy in what hay I was going to take. I felt lucky to be able to find a good grass hay, but it did have some of the offending weed in it. Thank goodness we began the shots when we did because my horse seems to be tolerating its presence fine. Otherwise I have no idea what we'd be feeding him this winter!

This has been a long story. I offer it at the recommendation from other owners that have had to deal with allergies in their Icelandic horses. The moral of the story is that the first step in deciding what to do for the horse is to determine exactly what the problem is instead of jumping to the conclusion that it's a genetic predisposition to culicoides allergies. It also illustrates that the ELISA survey doesn't have to scream of any particular allergy where there are several borderline readings. It seems that cumulatively, the effect of several borderlines could be worse than a clear allergy to one thing. As to some of the other theories offered in your study, I will add that my black horse does not seem to sweat as much as our first horse that seemed to be unaffected, however, we have since acquired a third Icelandic horse that seems to sweat at least as much as the first, yet was a test model for desensitizing shots ten years ago which seemed to also be successful. Because that was done so long ago, I do not know what that horse was reactive to nor do I know how long the shots were given. I do know I am not currently giving him shots nor were any recommended and he remained symptom-free this past summer.

I love these horses and it nearly broke my heart to see my horse suffer last year. Hopefully, neither of us will ever have to spend another summer like that one, but there are many people out there that struggle year after year after year thinking it's something that's inherent in the breed. For some, that may be the case, but I truly believe that the percentage of those cases is far lower than estimated. I'm afraid that a greater percentage may fall into the class that my horse fell into --- a class that can be helped to a point that will allow them to live normal, comfortable lives --- but are denied the opportunity because people don't know how to pursue it. I'm hoping this narrative will help give those people a direction.