Jessica's Lameness

Jessica has been lame for some time now.  I'm embarrassed to say how long.  At first I thought it was going to be an abscess because everything here is an abscess but an abscess never happened.  Plus, Jessica is the toughest horse we have and has never really had an abscess.   Then of course, rest heals everything, so she has been resting.  Granted, resting here is out on the side of a mountain running on 20 acres.  But instead of getting better she kept getting worse.  What at first seemed to be just a front leg lameness also became a rear end stiffness and general just not feeling good and suddenly looking very old.  Then it dawned on me, maybe she has Lyme disease.  She is acting like the Lyme positive dogs we see at the clinic every week.  I ran the dog test on her and she was positive, which means she has had exposure but doesn't necessarily mean that it is causing her symptoms.  

So I had my equine vet friend come look at her too.  She agrees the left front was her worst leg but there was definitely stuff going on elsewhere too.   She did a nerve block on the left front which blocked most of the lameness there but she was still in rough shape.  So I decided to go ahead and start treating her for Lyme disease to see what happens.  If she is no better then we will do more nerve blocks and radiographs.  I started her on doxycycline twice a day on Friday and by Tuesday she was running away from me again.  She hasn't done that in weeks.   She is still lame but moving much better overall and has more of her old attitude back.  I'm not 100% convinced yet that this is the problem but I'm hopeful.  We still have 25 days left of treatment to go.