what happens when you discover your horse has a massive trauma...
...firstly stay calm, your horse will appreciate it...please don't look if you can't handle gore, this is bloody nasty...
Bank Holiday Monday, about 7am, I came into the yard as usual and the boys were in each others stables, just standing there with their heads poking out. I noticed Tom had some blood on his white sock and wondered what he'd done to his leg. But when I got there, the blood trail led to a massive wound in my horse, his insides outside.Our Anniversary week off was about to be a bloody nightmare.
I shut him in the stable and called for John, called the vet, made their breakfasts.
Tom was stoic as usual, calm and unflustered. He stood there munching his breakfast while I held cotton wool and a dressing to the area to keep it all in place, the vet arrived in half an hour.
She was very calm of course, and after clipping around the area and cleaning it with a weak Hibiscrub solution, (just palest pink), she put Tom under sedation.
John had a syringe filled with saline and squirted under direction so she could cut away all the dead tissue. the hole was so big she could put her hand to the wrist inside my horse. Suffice it to say, I was standing at Tom's head being calm but useless, whilst John did all the work, helped and asked the important questions...and just as importantly listened and remembered.
The vet then injected local anaesthetic all over the large area, about 40cm long! She stitched the muscle together, then inserted a drain all the length of the wound, top to bottom, the skin was closed on top, all very neat in bright blue stitches. From the bottom of the drain, all the way to under Tom's belly I had to smear with Vaseline to stop the liquid irritating Tom and attracting flies.
She left me with after care instructions and boxes and sachets of powders I knew Tom would turn his nose up at, but he had to take them, his wound was so deep, we took photos for training purposes, and he'd missed his lung by millimetres.
HOW? Of course we can only guess, the vet told us he'd done it a couple of hours before she saw him, so 5am ish.
We think he came charging down the field, skidded and fell into the gateway post, taking the catch with him, bending it and impaling himself onto it, bending the strong shape as he went. trails of blood across my yard suggest he came straight into the yard to wait to be discovered.
A watery swelling grew during yesterday, this is perfectly normal, and has migrated to the lowest part of Tom's belly, this is just fluid from the trauma and will be absorbed in time.
I added a Citronella Tag to the dressing with Gaffa tape to keep the flies AWAY. Then hosed Tom's blood off my yard floor, and that was very sobering I can tell you.
It's Wednesday night now, and I have only just begun calming down. Tom is in his stable, doing well, and after another visit today, the vet seems happy with him.
I have tried to add only a selection of photos here because they are gruesome, but if this ever happens to your horse, you'll know what to expect.
Now here is a lovely picture to end, so we can hope for a healthy future:
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