When we went to tack up Solo today he had a nasty scrape on his leg. It’s on the inside of his knee and it looks as though he may have put his leg through the fence and then drawn it back quickly scraping it in the process (probably trying to climb out as dinner time approached). The scrape is on the inside of the joint and is painful to touch. There is swelling down the inside of the front leg but I think some of it is edema that has fallen from under the knee. He had to stay in and have his legs wrapped. We will assess it again in the morning after he has stood in wraps all night. I have not given him any anti inflammatory or analgesics as I want to be sure there is nothing else going on. Horses, being unfortunately unable to tell you where it hurts and how much, I am afraid giving him drugs too early might mask symptoms. After it is assessed in the morning I may give him a little Bute to keep the swelling down and keep him comfortable if he looks like he needs it. I am not quick to use drugs with any of my horses, I tend to work on the basis that less is more when it comes to drugs.
This is our second accident in recent weeks. Colombo fell and broke his tooth when he was discussing whether or not he wanted to load in the trailer to go to the Phillip Dutton clinic. We had no idea he had broken his tooth. When we got home, or vet x-rayed it and told us it had to be operated on under general anesthetic in order to remove the tooth and put an acrylic cap on it. Poor Colombo – throughout all of this he has been a complete stoic.
It seems that no matter how carefully you wrap all your horses in cotton wool they manage to scrape or break something anyway.
