maletto
Well-Known Member
I am need of ideas to keep a dressing on my horse's ear. I've ordered some of these: http://www.horze.co.uk/ear-plugs-hoods/ear-cover-neoprene/12720.html but they won't arrive for another week, and they seem to be the only product on the market that does what (I think) I need.
The background is this: On boxing day my gelding managed to take the skin off half his right ear somehow in the field. It's quite incredible and we've no idea how he did it, but the whole top layer of skin has literally been skinned from his ear leaving just bare flesh.
We called the vet and she sedated, cleaned, dressed and then bandaged with an elastoplast bandage that went around the ear and around his head. She came back on 29/12 and replaced bandage in the same fashion. On 1/1 he detached bandage. Vet came again on 3/1 and cleaned and bandaged in the same fashion, but fewer than 24 hours later and he had removed the bandage again - I think it's getting itchy where it's healing and he's been rubbing it loose.
Anyway the vet came back this morning and decided to do away with the round the head elastoplast contraption, so at the moment he has a dressing on the ear, a small tubigrip type thing over the dressing and elastoplast trying to secure the dressing to his forelock. then covered with a fly veil and fly mask..... the fly mask has stayed on, but i think the dressing etc has come loose and is slowly slipping to the end of his ear as i could see that the fly veil wasn't fully down to the base of his ear when I left.
Does anyone have any suggestions of approaches we could try to keep the dressing actually on his ear?! the vet wants it to remain moist to improve the chances of healing without permanent damage, so we really need to come up with a way of keeping the dressing on! Once the neoprene guard arrives i think it should be relatively straightforward but until then I'm stuck!!
The background is this: On boxing day my gelding managed to take the skin off half his right ear somehow in the field. It's quite incredible and we've no idea how he did it, but the whole top layer of skin has literally been skinned from his ear leaving just bare flesh.
We called the vet and she sedated, cleaned, dressed and then bandaged with an elastoplast bandage that went around the ear and around his head. She came back on 29/12 and replaced bandage in the same fashion. On 1/1 he detached bandage. Vet came again on 3/1 and cleaned and bandaged in the same fashion, but fewer than 24 hours later and he had removed the bandage again - I think it's getting itchy where it's healing and he's been rubbing it loose.
Anyway the vet came back this morning and decided to do away with the round the head elastoplast contraption, so at the moment he has a dressing on the ear, a small tubigrip type thing over the dressing and elastoplast trying to secure the dressing to his forelock. then covered with a fly veil and fly mask..... the fly mask has stayed on, but i think the dressing etc has come loose and is slowly slipping to the end of his ear as i could see that the fly veil wasn't fully down to the base of his ear when I left.
Does anyone have any suggestions of approaches we could try to keep the dressing actually on his ear?! the vet wants it to remain moist to improve the chances of healing without permanent damage, so we really need to come up with a way of keeping the dressing on! Once the neoprene guard arrives i think it should be relatively straightforward but until then I'm stuck!!
