I thought about this some last night. It could be so many things. But you could rule out things.... I know I saw a horse die of a heart attack once, he was thrashing in horrible pain and running with sweat. So it probably wasn't that. I have seen horses with neurological illness, they stagger and look at you like they don't seem to recognize things anymore. And they don't die within a few hours they go down and try and struggle up and get worse and worse over a period of days.... I am no expert, I am just thinking aloud trying to help. Sometimes there is no answer... like people it is just their time! and that is hard to accept sometimes... and so heartbreaking. My friend had a horse die of a stomach cancer growth and she acted like a colicky horse for a couple of months and then started having her belly fill with fluid til she was in such pain, it seemed like a terrible colic. Mosa's symptoms are more like something very sudden took her. When My Gallant Boy died, just lay down and didn't roll once, some people said his hear just failed, and one person on the list said it could have been an arythmia (sp?) but it seems like Mosa, like my Gallant Boy, knew something was wrong and that is why she followed to the gate. my Gallant Boy came to me, and stood by me, followed me, the evening before, and when i pet him I felt he had an unusually low body temperature. he was dying then, and he knew something was wrong and was telling me. But it was his time.
Her stepping backwards seems like trying to move away from some pain, or an imbalance, which could have been a neurological thing, an aneurysm or something. But rabies and west nile are both extremely aggressive neuroloigal killers once they start in earnest and it takes at least a couple of days of very strange, obviously very ill behavior. Mosa did not seem to show that type thing. staggering, dragging feet, going down, drooling, unfocused eyes, off her feed... It was just her time Mic! I am sorry. janice-- yipie tie yie yo
