The below is a letter written by Kim Meier-Morani, the private farm owner in Worton, Md., who has had an outbreak of EHV-1 on her farm. Meier-Morani has been a professional event trainer and coach for more than 30 years. She’s competed to the four-star level, and runs Seven Hills Farm, a boarding and training business on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The majority of Meier-Morani’s competition horses have been the products of her own small breeding program. Her four-star horse—now infected with EHV-1–is of the third generation of that program.

How has this outbreak of EHV-1 affected me? For starters, I had to sit on the cement aisle of my barn in January, at 6 a.m, with my daughter’s homebred not-even-5-year-old mare’s head in my lap to cushion it when she spasmed in semi-paralysis for an hour until help came.

Then, after the vet promising not to let her smash her face in while I woke my daughter up to tell her her horse wasn’t going to make it, I had to watch a 15-year-old stroke and cradle that head while the mare got put down. She was there when we dragged her horse out of the barn and pushed it onto the trailer. There is no easy or pretty way to do that.

Then I had to take care of the other 18 horses on the farm, finding a second one in the neurological stage and my own international eventer with a fever. My daughter helped me make the rounds of taking temperatures twice a day, giving medications, and holding the neurological horse as she staggered backwards and flipped over when being catheterized because of a paralyzed bladder.

More meds, less sleep. Calls from boarders, wanting to help but nothing they could do. Waiting for my next twice-daily email to see if their horse had a fever, or worse. Dreading getting up to see what was going to be wrong today.

Then, the wrong happens to be the horse it’s taken me a lifetime to breed, train and learn how to ride; a dream horse who not only had the scope and uncommon ability to make a four star event not only doable but easy, but who was my best friend and soulmate; to have him go neuro. Watching him sway with no balance; the same horse who jumped into the head of the lake at Rolex, but now he can hardly make it across the indoor. Why is he in the indoor? So if he goes down we can more easily drag his body away.

So I think about how to make some good come of it. I want to notify all farms receiving horses from a track not yet completely quarantined, but I am told by the Maryland state Department of Agriculture that that’s ridiculous. Ridiculous? Common sense or just plain good manners maybe, but ridiculous?

This decision-maker needs to watch “Outbreak”; he needs to be told how a disease spreads, and that information is the key to prevention. He needs to read the diary of anyone who’s ever taken care of a horse who may die tomorrow, no matter what they do. He needs to LISTEN to vets about how the virus is mutating. He needs to educate that a Flu/Rhino shot lasts only 90 days, and make vaccinations at tracks as mandatory as vaccinating your child before they go to school.

Next I hear about how much money the racing industry is losing. If it takes $5,000 a year to keep a horse, then including the year in utero I had $30,000 in my daughters horse, not counting the fact that she was talented and we loved her. It’s winter, so I don’t teach more than $600 worth a week. I was riding 5 horses in training, or $2500 per month plus $2500 in board. I called off three potential buyers coming to look in the first week alone, at horses priced at $10,$12 and $25K. I may lose my best horse. I may get sued by a boarder should they lose their horse. Do the math.

My life is out of my control. If I had been informed about what was floating around the place a horse came from, I could have been in control of my life and said either sure, I’ll risk it, or more likely, no thanks. But I wasn’t given that option. What’s killing me and my horses may not have come from the track, but using logic and veterinary science and the laws of probability, I’d bet it did.

My friends and boarders are in an uproar to close down the track, and sue Pimlico. But my whole concern is that I DON’T WANT THEM TO MOVE HORSES IN OR OUT because, and this is the point everyone seems to be missing, I don’t want anyone else to go through this; it’s not fair to the horses or their people.

I want it to be mandatory for owners and/or trainers of horses coming in, or to receiving barns to be notified that there is a possibility to have contact with the virus. Get it straight that contagious is contagious, and highly contagious or somewhat contagious i s dangerous when it can kill you. A little contagious is like a little pregnant; it’s a black/white situation.

Maryland State Veterinarian Dr. Guy Hohenhaus says he cannot do that. I think it would take a couple of sheets of plywood and some paint, or half hour at a typewriter and about 15 min with a copier.

There was an alleged case in Delaware, which later was confirmed negative. But officials in Delaware already had a plan to close ALL the tracks in the state should it be positive. Every vet I’ve talked to thinks the system is wrong, that the tracks should be quarantined, and one even outright called it a cover-up.

Fact: I had 20 horses, 8 got fevers, 3 went neurological, and one died, so far. One left the property. I was shut down an hour after the death and it was yet undiagnosed.

Pimlico has 500 horses, at least 11 symptomatic and 4 deaths. How many have left or entered the property? How long before they were quarantined?

With the help of my friends and clients, I want to let people know how devastating this disease is, through articles or websites of organizations. I want vets to know how to spot and treat this BEFORE a clients horse gets it, and teach them how to prevent it (no, there are no guaranteed measures, but plenty that can help keep it to a dull roar). I want laws that make it mandatory for any horse exiting a facility housing a potentially deadly virus be accompanied by a paper saying such for the person receiving it. I had a horse ship off my farm 3 days after the first temp here, and the new owners were informed to keep him separate for a while and take his temp, and that was before I had any idea it could be this bad. I did this so no one else’s horses got sick. And I thought that’s what the Department of Agriculture’s job was.