my boy got hurt :(
if anyone remembers my intro post a while ago, I moved to CA leaving my horses in Michigan. I got an email from my mom last week though, and she told me my gelding Windy had had a really bad accident and tore his face all up so I flew back for a week to see what the deal was (and because I felt pretty horrible naturally).
Turns out he had somehow managed to rip the flesh off his face from ontop of his eye down along his cheek and almost back to his throat. She told me it was really really bad and he's lucky he didn't lose both of his eyes, because on the other side there is a cut running along his eyelid. He had been outside in the arena, which is stock panels; the kind that hook together using round pins. We have absolutely no idea how this happened, but the only thing we can think of is that he cut himself on either the pin itself or the slot it goes into which sounds difficult considering how the space inbetween each panel when hooked up is 3 inches at most. He probably got his halter caught in them. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought it was potentially dangerous to leave the halter on in there (we always take them off when we turn them out into the field). But oh how wrong. It was a pretty bad lesson, but now when the horses are loose nobody has a halter on, no matter for how short a time it is until they each have a breakaway halter. Please keep this in mind, that apparently even the "horse safe" panels are NOT completely safe.
this is what he was in:
the stitched cut, this is after a week...
his crooked lip
my mom and sister were both there to help him right away, and repositioned the flap and held it in place while the vet got there, which took over 2 hours because it was storming pretty badly. It also ended up costing about $600, which well, what you gonna do, say no sorry too expensive? She gave him valium and sewed him back up, but didn't leave any drainage holes at all, just said it would find a way to drain on it's own...and it's not really doing that. We're putting warm compresses of saline on it to soak the hard stuff off and there is definitely swelling underneath that needs to come through. She also never gave him any kind of pain medication. Nothing besides some penicillin, which we have to give by injection and that sucks because obviously it stresses him out even more. So we considered rectal penicillin but I'm having a hard time finding any locally, and wondering if it's possible to give the regular penicillin rectally or if it is specialized?
Another thing is the vet said he may have permanent nerve damage because it was cut very deep in some spots. His top lip twists out to the side and his bottom lip kind of hangs open. He doesn't have a problem eating though. I'm just hoping that maybe the swelling is causing his lips to do that and it will go away :(
I did manage to get some riding in though, so hopefully my next post will have more happy pictures. I hope all your horses stay safe guys, injuries really put things back into perspective!
Turns out he had somehow managed to rip the flesh off his face from ontop of his eye down along his cheek and almost back to his throat. She told me it was really really bad and he's lucky he didn't lose both of his eyes, because on the other side there is a cut running along his eyelid. He had been outside in the arena, which is stock panels; the kind that hook together using round pins. We have absolutely no idea how this happened, but the only thing we can think of is that he cut himself on either the pin itself or the slot it goes into which sounds difficult considering how the space inbetween each panel when hooked up is 3 inches at most. He probably got his halter caught in them. I never in my wildest dreams would have thought it was potentially dangerous to leave the halter on in there (we always take them off when we turn them out into the field). But oh how wrong. It was a pretty bad lesson, but now when the horses are loose nobody has a halter on, no matter for how short a time it is until they each have a breakaway halter. Please keep this in mind, that apparently even the "horse safe" panels are NOT completely safe.
this is what he was in:
the stitched cut, this is after a week...
his crooked lip
my mom and sister were both there to help him right away, and repositioned the flap and held it in place while the vet got there, which took over 2 hours because it was storming pretty badly. It also ended up costing about $600, which well, what you gonna do, say no sorry too expensive? She gave him valium and sewed him back up, but didn't leave any drainage holes at all, just said it would find a way to drain on it's own...and it's not really doing that. We're putting warm compresses of saline on it to soak the hard stuff off and there is definitely swelling underneath that needs to come through. She also never gave him any kind of pain medication. Nothing besides some penicillin, which we have to give by injection and that sucks because obviously it stresses him out even more. So we considered rectal penicillin but I'm having a hard time finding any locally, and wondering if it's possible to give the regular penicillin rectally or if it is specialized?
Another thing is the vet said he may have permanent nerve damage because it was cut very deep in some spots. His top lip twists out to the side and his bottom lip kind of hangs open. He doesn't have a problem eating though. I'm just hoping that maybe the swelling is causing his lips to do that and it will go away :(
I did manage to get some riding in though, so hopefully my next post will have more happy pictures. I hope all your horses stay safe guys, injuries really put things back into perspective!