SWEDEN-based Tipperary native Thomas Ryan has gone through a harrowing six weeks with his horses battling the effects of the neurological form of the Equine Herpes Virus-1 (EHV-1) at the show jumping tour in Valencia, Spain.

Sadly, Ryan lost two horses to the deadly virus – his top Grand Prix horse, the nine-year-old gelding Quintano (Quality Time TN x Carthago Z), and the six-year-old gelding Smokey (Stakkato Gold x Espri), both owned by Jumper Horses Sweden.

Speaking to The Irish Field after returning home to Sweden last week, which he described as a “big relief”, Thomas described how the virus took hold on his horses.

“The first horse we lost was Smokey, a six-year-old who actually won the six-year-old final on the last week of the show. He was starting to recover, he had his five-day fever and then they say days five to 10 are the dangerous days for the neurological symptoms. He started getting them straight away when the fever stopped, he started wobbling, and was struggling to walk behind.

“Within three to four days on the medication, he started to slowly straighten up, but the next problem was he wasn’t able to urinate by himself. We had to use the catheter at the show, three or four times a day to help him urinate, but he wasn’t getting any better. We decided he would be better in the clinic so they could put a permanent catheter in it or else it would eventually turn into an infection.

“He was in the clinic, but the pain wasn’t going away. They scanned him and found urine in his abdomen. He then had to get a catheter underneath to let that out and we hoped after a few days that would clean up with medication and rest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, his bladder wall gave in and we had to put him to sleep,” Thomas explained.

Heartbreak

Sadly, he then lost Quintano in a painful way. “My good horse Quintano, he was just about to do his first three-star Grand Prix when the show was cancelled. There was about 10 horses before him when the show was shut down.

“He developed neurological problems quite late. He was on day 10 when he got them. He was worse than Smokey, we had to walk him holding him by the tail for three or four days, he could only walk about 20 metres a day. But again, after about four to five days, he slowly started to recover, started to straighten, to the point where he could walk without help, walking forward and back about 50 metres.

“A week before we planned to try to get him home, he was out walking and he lost his back leg, he went down and his pelvis broke. It was a bad break. He stayed on the show grounds for a few days because we couldn’t move him. We got him to stand and had him X-rayed and scanned with portable machines. Nothing could be found, everything looked okay, so we were hoped it was a really bad stone bruise.”

Autopsy

“He seemed happy, he was eating, my groom was with him 24/7. He started to move a little bit around the box by himself and we managed to get him into the two horse truck. With the help of Adrian Cronin, myself and Adrian drove him to the clinic in Barcelona, with the plan to do a sonography.

“They put him under general anesthetic and put him on the table where they could X-ray from underneath him with a stronger machine. It turned out the pelvis had several cracks, which were continuing into the hip joint. There was no chance for survival.

“My vets in Switzerland have ordered an autopsy on him, we are waiting on the results, to see how much damage the virus had done to his spinal cord. That is where the neurological problems set in, it causes swelling in the spinal cord.

“The vets said for a horse that just lost his back end and fell down behind, there was too much damage done. So the autopsy will tell us how badly it had been before he fell; that the virus had maybe made the bones brittle or caused legions in the bones by itself.”

Road to home

Thomas and his team eventually got all their horses home to Sweden last Thursday and they are now doing a 21-day quarantine. The virus has had devastating effects on his stable, and vets say it will be two to three months before the horses will be ready for another show.

“The process of getting home was not really what we wanted. The only stables that would take us were in Lyon, France, and in Holland. We always travel down to Spain in four eight or nine hour trips, but now they had to do a 14-hour, 10-hour and 14-hour trip to get home, which was not ideal for horses that were meant to be sick.

“But actually they all handled the trip very well. They are in quarantine since last Thursday, we have to do a 21-day quarantine in Sweden. They are all fresh, they are all riding for about 15 minutes a day now – that is about 13 minutes walking and a short two-minute trot at the end.

“They will continue that until next week, when my vet flies in from Switzerland to do an examination on them, and slowly they will start to progress. But the vets reckon it will be two to three months of rehab before they are show fit again.”

Asked how he felt following the experience, he struggled to answer before saying: “It’s been an experience we want to forget but probably never will. We have a lot more horses to look after, we have to think forward for them now.”

Biosecurity

He is not thinking about getting back to shows yet, but is glad the FEI are being serious and proactive about biosecurity. “To be honest, I am really not thinking about it [going to a show]. It is going to be quite a while before I go to a show again, international anyway. Now as it is, I have lost my Grand Prix horse, and the top horse I had last year has been retired, so at the moment, I am not putting much thought into it.

“I have read the report and read Peter Charles’ interview the other day, now it looks like finally it will be taken really seriously and I am happy about that. It is a situation that can never happen again, it is something you just couldn’t imagine, even thinking back on it now, it was just crazy.

“Both horses I lost were from the same owner, which made the trip extremely hard on her. She is devastated, we talk every day, and she has been very good. Her other three horses are recovering very well.

“My owners, students, parents, everyone has been super this whole time, they are really behind us.

“Horse Sport Ireland were super. Between Triona Connors, Avalon Everett and Taylor Vard, I had all three of them on the phone every day for six weeks, helping with anything I needed, anything I asked for.”