Swollen eye? Ahhh!

Lacey's right eye is basically super swollen. I've noticed that it looked kinda swollen for the last few days but nothing too extreme, just a little iffy. But then, this morning when I went up there to get her ready for our lesson, her eye was completely swollen shut. So, I obviously canceled the lesson but now I'm not sure what to do.

She's tearing up on that side and her lower eyelid seems awfully floppy in conjunction to the other lower eyelid... However, her eyeball looks fine and there aren't any abrasions or anything around the eye...

I called my hoof trimmer who generally has good advice and she told me to wash it out with saline solution then put eye ointment on it so I'm going to go try to find some saline solution in my house and maybe in looking I'll find some eye ointment. She figures maybe she just poked her eye on something and now it's angry about that. She also said to give it until Monday, then call the vet if it's not better.

Is she correct? I'm totally not made of money so I'd like to not spend money if it's possible, however, my Lacey girl is worth all the money in the world to me so I don't really care if money ends up being spent. I'd just like to make sure it needs to be spent. The vet closes for the weekend at 12pm and it's 10am now so y'all have 2 hours to tell me I need to call or I can wait.

I would go ahead and just call the vet and see what they say over the phone. It could be something like a scratch or a plugged tear duct, or she could have something in there. Only a vet would know.

Call your vet out to stain the eye if there is an ulcer you will need some prescription eye meds. If you are tight with the vet, get him to give you some stain strips and show you how to use them in case this happens in the future. Don't mess around eye injuries.

I would give your horse some bute if you have any until your vet gets there.

I would call the vet like they said. Although my mom's horse is a like the queen of swollen eyes. She gets stung and stuff all the time. We normally open her eye to see if there is anything visible my horse scratched his eye and I could see the scratch, but ulcers are not really visable. You can't just get any type of ointment because if there is a scratch or ulcer you could do more damage by just guessing.

We always give my moms horse two grams of bute and check in the morning, and most of the time it's just fine. Her eye was even foaming one time. It was crazy.

Phone calls are free. Is it painful when you prod it? My cat's eye will swell up and get seepy sometimes, and I just get a rag wet with cold water, only wring it out a little, and then wipe her eye and dribble some water in it to help flush it out. Of course, that's a cat, and it's happened a few times now.

I would at least call to see what your vet thinks. It's not necessarily time to panic about it, but definitely cautious. Good luck with poor Lacey!

I called the vet and the vet felt she should come out since it sounded to her like Lacey is going to need some real medicine. So, she's going to be here at 11:30. And now that I've been basically watching Lacey for an hour, she seems super sedate for her. She's not even super po-ed that she's in the shed where she can't see anything. :(
Cross your fingers for us!
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XX Fingers crossed that it's something simple.

Fingers crossed it's a cheap visit [as far as vets go] and Lacey will heal in no time.

Thanks for the good wishes! They must have helped.

According to the vet, her eye is just scratched, kind of badly, so she gave me some ointment to put on it twice a day. She said it should be healed by Thursday, so hopefully it is!

There goes starting to work her more during the week! Haha
It was $130ish, so not really easily payable, but within the range of "I'll have that in a few weeks."

I like to try to think on the bright side, and on the bright side is that now they know where she is so that if we ever have a real emergency I won't have to try to remember the address of my neighbor's house, and now they've seen her so they have a kind of baseline of her behavior, if there ever is a real emergency. So yay for that.
The vet even remembered me from 2 years ago at my camp when we had to call them out to suture up a horse's leg! I was impressed.

Sounds like an awesome vet and I am so glad that Lacey girl is going to be okay. Give her some hugs from me. And a couple hugs to you too(()).