The Incident (semi graphic pictures – beware)

Liam sure does like to keep my life interesting.  The Sunday before last (8/10) my friend and I had a lovely ride at Christy Hoffman’s park.  Somehow on our way home Liam cut himself in the trailer.  We arrived back at the barn and I noticed one of the cables that hold the hay net up came undone.  I thought, oh darn, I guess I will need to replace that cable.  My friend undid the butt bar and I started backing Liam out of the trailer when he sniffed my arm. When be pulled his head away my arm was covered in blood. What the heck???

I backed him out of the trailer quickly and looked under his chin and saw a bloody mess.  It must have just happened because there wasn’t even a drip in the trailer.  Quickly got him over to the wash area.  Ran back to the trailer to help my friend unload her pony and ran back to the wash area to see what was going on with his chin.  Liam is not always the best patient and I was worried that he wouldn’t let me touch the cut area.  I got the hose and started to spray, on a light setting, his chin and this is what I discovered…

Nice gash under his chin right on his jaw…

I quickly sent my vet the above picture and the following message:

Liam cut himself in the trailer today on our way home.  Good gash, not sure if it is stitch-able because of the location on his jaw.

While waiting for her response I got the betadine out and diluted it with some water and cleaned the cut out.  I was shocked that Liam let me do this.  Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t a happy camper about it, but tolerated it.  The bleeding finally stopped (took forever) and I was really able to inspect the gash.

Yup, pretty good one Liam…

 

I didn’t hear back from my vet yet, which was odd, she usually responds very quickly…  So I decided to give her a call and her voice mail said she was away until the next day and for emergencies to call the local horse hospital.  At this point I didn’t know what to do.  Liam is really bad with the vet and I didn’t want to call the horse hospital and have a young on call vet out that has never met me or my horse.  Liam again, is very BAD with the vet and I was afraid that a young vet wouldn’t understand this.  I decided to send the cleaned up picture to my normal vet and hopefully maybe she would respond with instructions to either call the vet hospital immediately danger danger or that he will live and put him on some antibiotics and bute…

After hemming and hawing for what felt like forever I decided to give Liam antibiotics, bute, and cover cut with triple antibiotic.  I figured it would be worse if I have a vet out that doesn’t know Liam and he flips himself over again and gets more hurt then this cut.  I am not worried about scaring, the cut was underneath his chin, and at this point I wasn’t even sure if the cut was even stitch-able because it is located right on his jaw, at a very movable spot…

In the meantime, Liam happened to open the cut up again and it was bleeding heavy… Ugh… I got some clean gauze pads out and Liam let me hold the pads on the cut to stop the bleeding.  Well, at least I know the cut is well flushed I thought.  Got the bleeding to stop again and smeared on some triple antibiotic to hopefully deter anymore bleeding. 

 

Gave Liam his meds and stuck him back outside.  Sent my vet a follow up text with exactly what I did.

As I was pulling out of the driveway my vet texted me back:

All sounds good, you did exactly what I would of advised you to do, I will call you tomorrow AM.

Big relief…  I made the right decision…  Did I tell you I love my vet, she responded even though she was away on vacation with her family.  Yup, I was that person bothering her on vacation.  I felt really confident in my decicion the next day when the cut looked like this.

Amazing how it healed up so fast… The plan was 3-4 days of bute, 4-5 days of antibiotics, and cover with triple antibiotics.