Need some healing prayers for my boy Red (some graphic photos -- beware!)

Thanks for the tip on the duct tape, which makes sense, although my vet said I could use it. She did say the elastic tape was better (when she saw him 3 days ago, she used hers to wrap him up) but that duct tape is a lot cheaper and gets the job done too.

I do not normally put duct tape around the bottom of the wrap, but my Vet Wrap didn't go as low as I would have liked. So I just wanted to have another layer of something holding my padding. I didn't make it real tight on the bottom.

I do have at least 3 layers of cotton wrap under it all, plus some soft 6" brown gauze wrap, so it's got some cushion under it.

I definitely have to use duct tape, as my bandaging never stayed up until I started using it.

His leg only has a very small amount of swelling, so that's good at least.

I was tempted to get buy some Underwood, but if it doesn't help with proud flesh, that won't help me any!

I was just told of the Equi-ade earlier today too.

Nope. The Underwood won't help much with the proudflesh on leg wounds. It probably does a decent job with proud flesh on flesh wounds and I still love the stuff for how it started us out, but on my mare's injury, the proud flesh was pretty bad after about 3 weeks. The Underwood is good for using on the wound immediately to disinfect and start growing the granulated tissue which turns into proud flesh when it goes overboard later. Healthy granulated tissue does serve a purpose. But I highly recommend the Equaide at your stage. I was blown away at how quickly it put the proud flesh in it's place. And it's a super quick healer so be sure there's no infection because it will actually warn you that it could heal over an internal infection. However, it does help with surface infection as well. I changed the bandages every 24 hours at first and the dead proud flesh just pealed away. After about 3 or 4 days, I started going every 48 hours. By then, healthy skin was showing around the outside edges. If you're interested, I can pm you some progress pics. They are pretty nasty.

So I had an unpleasant surprise when I went out to check on Red on Saturday.

HE GOT INTO HIS BAG OF SWEET FEED.


Great. Just one more thing I needed.

On top of it, my husband, his dad, and his aunt came with because they had just wanted to see the horses (we just got done having lunch with them). I open up the shed to take a look at Red and the inner gate was open .... where I store my sweet feed, Equine Saver supplement, and loose salt (among other things). Both of the bins that I keep the feed and salt in have the covers torn off, my Equine Saver spilled all on the ground, a couple of my poles (for pole bending) tipped over, and just a huge mess. And Red was like "OOOOO! Someone to give me more hay!! I'm hungry"

I could have shot him right then and there.

Thank God he only ate like a 1/4 of the bag (which of course, was a full brand new bag ... why wouldn't it be?) and not the whole thing. I still called the vet on the spot just to be sure what I should watch for. I've already read about colic and foundering in magazines and such when horses do this, but I've never had a horse actually get into his feed.

So she told me to give him banamine for 3 or 4 days as a precaution. Now trying to make sure my memory serves me correct on what she told me: If he's going to colic, she said that would happen probably in the first 24 hours. However, he could founder up to a week after the fact. She said since he didn't eat the whole bag, he probably would be fine, but of course, we should still watch him.

He's had normal bowel movements since then and no symptoms, so I think it is safe to say we are out of the woods for the colic, but we'll still have to keep tabs on the foundering possibility.

As if I didn't need to spend more $$$ on meds for him, and more time worrying!!!

I have no idea how he got that inside gate open. The latch is on the backside. It honestly never even crossed my mind that he would get in there, but it's now being double held shut with an extra rope around it.


And THEN to top everything else off on this trend we've been having, I get out to the horses yesterday, because we changed Red's bandage. I get out there and one of my boarding lady's horses is in the corral with my Shotgun.

We had talked about putting Newt (her horse) in with Shotgun when I sent Red to the reining trainer, just for the purpose of keeping him company. She always tells me everything they do before they do it, so she would have told me that she put Newt in there. All the gates were closed. The fences were fine. And Newt looked "okay" although I didn't inspect him closely. She was going to be out in a few minutes to help me, so I figured I'd just wait until she got out there, as Newt and Shotgun were doing fine.

She gets outside and she's like "what the hell is going on?"

She had just been outside at about 1:00 to check on everyone. This was now about 2:30. Newt wasn't in my corral at 1:00 so it must have just happened.

She looked at Newt closer and saw that he was missing hair under his back legs, with a small amount of blood, and hair missing on the front of his hind cannon bones. In the corral, they have wooden posts with small round metal pipes as the railing. So clearly he tried to jump the fence and didn't quite make it. He looked okay at the moment (wasn't limping profusely or anything) but I imagine he'll be quite sore in the next few days.

I swear. I don't know what else could possibly happen right about now.

This is insane!!

I did snap a few photos yesterday (Sunday).

His lower canon bone and ankle seemed a lot more swollen than it has in the past. However, I haven't been wrapping as low as I used to be, so I wonder if that has something do to with it? The swelling isn't too bad, but it is more than it used to be.

The green stuff on his leg is from the ProudsOff I used. The maxis pad slipped down a bit and smeared it. The photos are from before I cleaned off his leg. This time I decided to just used hydrocortisone where he needed it for the proud flesh, like the vet said to. It's not as caustic as the ProudsOff.

So yesterday was day 26 after the injury.

Alrighty! I'm liking how it looked last night for a bandage change, although we still have a long way to go.

I also wrapped his pastern with a polo wrap (to save on bandaging that low) a couple days ago to help control the stocking up and it worked wonderfully. His leg was back to normal as far as the swelling is concerned. So I will keep doing that. At least it's a washable bandage, instead of actually using $$ bandaging to wrap his entire leg.

My maxi pad has slipped down ever so slightly, so I think that's why the top part was bloody from rubbing on my cotton pad. I try so hard to get it smack dab in the center where it needs to go, and then to get it to stay.




I definitely like how the hydrocortisone took care of the bump out when you look at it from the side. It sucked it back nicely! I still needed to apply some on the inner side of the wound, as it wasn't quite flush with the skin. But looking pretty good as far as the proud flesh is concerned. We're keeping it under control.

You also can see the perfect circle edge of where the maxi pad was on his leg (which is why the top of the wound wasn't covered perfectly), as I took the picture before I wiped off his leg hair area.





Yay the swelling is better!!!!






This will be our LONGEST time frame between bandage changes over the weekend, as I am leaving today to go on a ski trip that's been planned since before December. I won't be back until Monday night, so it will be changed then. But that's 5 days, so hopefully that should be okay. It's been looking good with not too much discharge so I think we should be good to go longer just this once.

It's looking good! Keep it up. I bet it'll have hair over it by summer. Enjoy your trip. I can't wait to see how it looks when you get back. :)

When I was working at a breeding farm, we had a horse who kicked up and over the stall and did this to her hock. Luckily, the vet JUST HAPPENED to be there to get coggins on another horse and told us what we already knew. Also told us it would take months to heal, like your boy. Two weeks later the owner starting pushing me to ride the horse and I refused. About two weeks after that she came down with her daughter while I wasn't there and lunged her hard before putting her daughter on, who promptly got bucked off.

The leg ballooned up...after all of my effort to get back to where it was. I quit the next day when I found out (way more problems with the farm than that, it was just the last straw). "Months to heal" means months to heal! I know its sometimes hard to comprehend but come on!

It looks like he is making a good recovery. I'm glad you are doing everything you should be and its showing in your progression photos.

And we are on day 34 since the injury.

This was the longest the bandage has been on (5 days) from the 13th to the 18th, as I was gone over the weekend.

It looked okay, but I think the next time I change the bandage, I will use my ProudsOff on the inner/inferior portion of the wound, because it is actually a bit MORE raised that it was for the last bandage change. The cortisone didn't seem to do the trick as well this time.




There was a bit more ooze on the bandage this time, but then again, it was on longer.




I didn't clean his leg up very well last night, because a "feels like" -26 below zero is just too cold to be doing that. I'm sick of these cold spells!!!

My maxi pad must have slipped a tad (or I didn't get it high enough) which is why the top of the wound is scabby/bloody looking.

I also got my new cast padding bandage wrap to use under the vet wrap. It worked so great! And he's still rocking his tiger-stripe polo wrap for the stocking up (which is working great)

OH geez!!! Poor guy!
Just now seen this thread...looks like he is healing nicely.
Nothing like a bad injury to make you a pro at bandaging and wrapping..haha.