Serious Heel, foot, coronet injury :( VERY GRAPHIC BLOODY ! UPDATE: 07/09/12 !!!

To me it looks like he pulled the stitches

Yeah he pulled some of the stitches out.. Sky did that too with an injury on his pastern...

Second bandage change today. The wound itself looks much better in my opinion. When I took the bandages off, however, the smell almost knocked me over! His foot smelled as if I had bandaged a dead mouse into his hoof or something, such a rotten smell. His sole looks like he may be developing thrush, but it definitely did NOT smell like thrush, it smelled luck rotting corpse. I washed out his hoof, frog with a mixture of betadine/water and the smell immediately went away. Then I soaked the rest of his foot and the wound down with it and let it air dry for a while before wrapping it back up.

Cinny's temperature has elevated to 100. I am not going to worry yet because that is still in the normal range AND it's a very very HOT day today (over 100). He doesn't act sore, isn't limping and didn't mind me messing with the foot at all. His attitude is very normal. I did stretching exercises with him and then put him away with his lunch.

FWIW - if there's any blood in the bandages or on the horse still, that might account for the smell. Rotting blood is one of the nastiest smells I've ever encountered. I ran into that when my brother was injured in a way that made it undesirable to do frequent bandage changes. I just had to breathe through my mouth when visiting him - it wasn't so bad that way. At least he was unconscious for that part of things...

If that's what it is, it's nothing to worry about, but it is totally disgusting. Since the smell went away with the betadine, I'm guessing that's the case.

There was actually very little blood in the bandages this time. The first change they were soaked and really gross, but today there was almost none at all.

Maybe the amount in or on the wound was enough. It doesn't take much to make a stench. I wouldn't have believed just how bad rotting blood smelled until I experienced it myself.

Wow! Glad he's okay! My friend's black quarter horse mare did something almost exactly the same. She actually severed an artery. Her name was Seneca, and we called her Senny for short... quite a coincidence?!

I know that odor well.
You may want to remove the sutures that aren't holding anything.

Cinny, my colt cut his pastern twice in the last 6 weeks so I am going through the same challenges that you are. There wasn't any damage done to bone joint or tendons and no artery cut. I've had issues with bandaging though. It's a tough location for healing.
Wound care has become so much a part of our routine now that he will think it is just a normal part of his grooming.

Yeah, that bandaging isn't fun or easy. For the outer bandage (duck tape) my vet had me put pieces together to make a square and then put it on the sole and fold it up toward the ankles, sort of like a bag..hard to explain. And then wrap the duck tape around but today I thought why not buy "duck tape sheets" and use that instead of wasting ten minutes trying to stick pieces together to make the same thing. I'm going to try that on Friday with the next bandage change... only i'm going to cut from the corners toward the center for a few inches so it can sort of fold together, then duck tape the top. I'll see how it works.

I was actually thinking of trying to make sort of a pattern to use to cut the duck tape sheet so that it will fold around properly. If I succeed I'll probably put it online for others to use.

Luckily, Cinny is a relatively good patient and allows me to mess with and bandage the foot. When he gets bored he just starts nibbling on the back of my pants. I guess it's his way of saying "hurry up, darn you!"