Ironic allergen

I love horses. I came from a place where we didn’t get to see any very often and moved to a place where the horses are sometimes more famous than people. Derby City, baby. I love this. It gives me an excuse to have pictures and statues of horses all around the house, without looking like a crazy lady. 

I love cheering them on during races, I love seeing them run and jump, but most of all, I love petting them. I am a 6 year old girl trapped in a 25 year old body. I want to pet their noses and brush their mane, pat their big bellies and scratch their little chinny chin chins. 

Petting Big Shot.

Lucky for me, I met a man with a horse. Jackpot! James and his family have four horses on their farm: Big Shot, Poko, Sassy and Diamond. Diamond is the youngest, and is James’ horse. He is my favorite. Diamond is the horse version of a dog. He comes when he is called, prances around when he sees James, his favorite person, and he follows you wherever you go. James has even said that when he goes into the woods on their property, to hunt, that Diamond will follow him in and stand at the base of the tree he is hunting out of until he comes down. 

Poko is on the left and Sassy on the right.

Sassy on the left, big Shot on the right.

When James goes out in the field Diamond will come running up and nuzzle him all over. If he is working on something this horse will hang it’s head over his shoulder and help. He stands as close to him as he can be. Once, when we were out petting the horses, Diamond discovered James had a hooded sweatshirt and stood there with his long face in the hood the entire time. I love it. I love Diamond. I wish I could see him and pet him every day.

Diamond, checking out James' ride.

Well, sometimes when we are out at the farm I will walk over to pet the horses. Usually, when we are out there we have a lot of work to do, so I don’t get many chances. One day, when James and his dad were tending to our baby apple trees in the far field I walked over to see the horses. They came running up, of course, and stood around while I fed them clovers and rubbed their noses. Diamond, of course, was all up in my grill. He nuzzled and snuggled and rubbed himself all over me, almost like a cat. I petted his big nose and pulled burrs from his mane. 

After a while I decided to walk over to where the boys were working to check and see if they needed any help. It was a chilly day so they had driven the truck over. I walked through the horse pasture, through the hay field, across the street and through two more hay fields before meeting them. As soon as I walked up James turned his head and stopped... “Are you feeling ok?”

I mean sure, it’s a little cold and my nose is runny but whatever. I walked a bit closer and he asked, “Are you sure?”. Why? “Why don’t you just sit in the truck for a minute, we’re almost finished and I’ll take you back to the house...”

I climbed up in the truck, lucky to have walked over just in time for them to be finishing up. I glanced in the rear view mirror and that’s when I saw it. Emm effin’ “Hitch” up in here! 

My face was swollen so badly my eyes were barely visible. There were puffy red patches all over my cheeks and neck. The areas around my eyes were almost blistering. Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap.

James looked at me again and drove straight to the house. “What the hell, babe? What did you get into?” he asked. I told him I had just been petting the horses and he laughed a little. Really? When we got inside his mom just looked at me and said, “Oh.... “

Never a good sign. He drove me the 20 minutes or so to the nearest gas station and I bought some Benadryl. On the way I recounted everything I had done, which was just petting the horses for the most part. Yup. As luck would have it, I am allergic to horses.

Most of my allergies are the sneezy kind. I have never had a reaction this badly to anything in my life. It is devastating! After several trips to see the horses afterwards we tested this theory. Every time I petted a horse, any horse (we tested it on three different farm’s horses) my face would swell up and itch. So it definitely was the horses, not some plant they got into or ate. 

I started taking Claratin, which helped a lot, but I feel like every time I rub a horsey’s noney now I am flirting with disaster. I have to strategically plan my horse pet time so as not to compromise any following events or photo ops for sure. It was a sad, sad day when I discovered this. Of course I would be terribly allergic to the one animal I loved so much (well, technically I am allergic to cats, too - cruel cruel world!!!).

If anyone has any suggestions other than shots I am open to them... google has told me that there exists a breed of horse with curly hair (imagine that). Could this be the answer to my predicament?