Tuesday, December 05, 2006

irresistable force vs immovable object

This is a pony I was called to treat a couple of days ago, Lesson number 1 in the horse care manual is don't run into it with your pick up and a addendum to lesson one is if you do call the vet asap. Leaving it 24 hours is a very bad idea. (probably not as bad as idea number 1 but still not good) If you do both of those things the hind leg will look something like this. The black bit is I believe bone!
Fortunately this horse is not showing pain at the moment but I don't know why, it should be in agony.
I was able to pass a finger into the joint space and a fairway up the tendons from the wound. You can see from the pictures how swollen it is around the joint.
On xray there appears to be whole bits of bone gone. The calcaneus has been sheared and pulled up the leg by the tendon I think and joint involvement is a distinct possibility
We decided to euthanase this horse on welfare grounds. However we had to wait for the owner to get back from hospital as he had broken his leg after falling off a motorbike that day.

Poor bloody horse!

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