This may set in with the same abruptness as articular rheumatism, the
animal in the morning after a wet, dewy or frigid night showing general
stiffness and lameness with extreme sensitiveness of the skin and
muscles along the back and loins. The animal moves slowly and stiffly,
grunting perhaps at each step and shows inappetence, fever, dry muzzle
and costiveness. This is essentially _rachialgia_ or _lumbago._
Pandiculation on rising is entirely omitted.
Not infrequently the _muscles of the shoulder_ are mainly affected and
become exceedingly tender to manipulation. The patient seeks to remain
recumbent and when raised will get up on his hind parts and remain thus
for some time resting on the knees before he can be made to get up in
front.
When the _muscles of the croup_ are attacked the mode of getting up is
reversed, the animal rising first on its fore feet and remaining for a
time sitting on its haunches or resting on the hocks before it gets on
the hind.
If the _muscles of the neck_ are involved there is the same stiffness,
soreness, tenderness and twisting to one side or rigid elevation of the
neck as seen in the horse in similar circumstances.
In any case there is a tendency to extension or shifting from one part
to another, and notably to the implication of the tendons, synovial
sheaths and joints. This is especially the case in the acute type, while
chronic rheumatism may remain long confined to the groups of muscles
which are first attacked. In the acute forms too there is the greatest
liability to internal complications not only cardiac, but according to
Cruzel abdominal and thoracic as well.
A fatal result is rare, but the impairment of appetite and digestion,
the constant and often severe suffering, the destruction of the red
globules, and the malnutrition, and increased and perverted metabolism
as shown in the pallor of the visible mucous membranes, the steady loss
of condition and advancing emaciation, the rigid, dry, scurfy, hidebound
skin, tends to wear out the subject or render it unprofitable. In the
chronic form it may last for months.