appyjude
Well-Known Member
Now that my lovely mare is home safe and sound, I thought I would relay my weekend incident to all as a heads up.
Our property is bordered by post and rails fences on three sides and stock fencing with electric tape on the fourth - no barbed wire at all. Each field is seperated by a 5 bar gate which closed onto the posts with a latch, that was how the stock fence contractor set it up when we bought the land - I have never questioned it nor had I thought twice about it and, apart from re-hanging the gates when they drop, we have never considered it could be done differently.
On Saturday, whilst finishing off my herd before making my way to March for the Reining, I was moving three horses from one field to another with an empty field in the middle. I moved the 13yr old, sensible brood mare first, leaving the excited two year old and yearling to move next. Mare was put behind electric fencing (wooden posts, not plastic poles) and I went accross the field to get the 2yr old - who was yelling at us to bring her friend back. Mare began answering back and franticly trotting up and down the fence line.
I went through the gate and my 13 year old son was following about 20ft behind me, as he opened the gate the mare broke through the tape and made a mad dash for the gate - I yelled at him to throw the gate open as she would have crashed into him and it and she ran full tilt down the fence and "handbreak" turned through the gate - catching herself on the latch as she did so.
Poor son yelled, what has she done? I turned around to see him white as a sheet and mare galloping past me with an enormous open wound to the shoulder. A neighbour was running accross the field to catch her and she stopped dead 2/3rds of the way up the field. I got to her and she had a tear 15" long and 8" accross in an L shape on her right shoulder. I telephoned the vet at 11.15 and told them what had happened, and lead her slowly into a stable that had just been cleaned and new rubber laid down. My neighbour brought over her first aid kit and between us we managed to dress, pad and bandage the wound to cover it and put a rug over her as she was going into shock. At 11.27 my vet was in the drive asking which stable block I was in. He came in, removed the padding and told us he was referring us to an equine surgeon as it was far to big for him to attempt there. He administered pain killers, antibiotics, anti tetnus and re dressed the wound and we set off for the nearest equine hospital.
At half midday we arrive at the hospital and they were waiting for us, for over three hours she was in surgery, under local with me standing with her head on my shoulder whilst they cut away the full hand span size piece of muscle that could not be saved, stitched in layers and explained that as the wound had gone down and exposed the shoulder bone, there was a chance that if infection got into the joint that "would be the end" as there was no way of flushing it and it would cripple her.
They inserted a drip and completed the stitching - over 60 stitches. The wound was far bigger than we first thought - extending over 12" along her side past her ribs - somehow she had managed to lift the skin and tear the muscle without tearing the skin on top.
For 48 hours we waited anxiously to see if we had caught the wound before infection set in, I saw her morning and night and by Monday she was almost her old self, bright eyed and looking for food over the stable door at the vets. She came home on Tuesday evening, complete with injections still to have, powders for the food and box rest for two weeks.
If we had not been there when this happened, the vet told us there would have been very little chance of her surviving, let alone ending up as relatively unscathed as she has - it would have been a career ending injury in a performance horse but she is a broodmare and isn't ridden so the result is cosmetic for us. The wound was sufficiently large as to make it a minor miracle that things have turned out as well as they have - early intervention was the key.
On Sunday I was at the yard by 9 and re-hung all the gates so that I could drill holes into the gate posts and make the spring bolt shut into them - all our latches are now gone.
Oh, the icing on the cake, she was unconfirmed pregnant when she did the accident - the vets scanned her before she went home and she indeed is still pregnant - even after all this trauma!
I have a photo of the stitched wound of anyone who might be interested to see the extent of it - however out of respect for those, like my son, who can't cope with that sort of thing - you will have to pm me with an email address and I will send it to you Sorry for such a long post, but if anyone benefits from the lessons we learnt it will be well worth it.
Our property is bordered by post and rails fences on three sides and stock fencing with electric tape on the fourth - no barbed wire at all. Each field is seperated by a 5 bar gate which closed onto the posts with a latch, that was how the stock fence contractor set it up when we bought the land - I have never questioned it nor had I thought twice about it and, apart from re-hanging the gates when they drop, we have never considered it could be done differently.
On Saturday, whilst finishing off my herd before making my way to March for the Reining, I was moving three horses from one field to another with an empty field in the middle. I moved the 13yr old, sensible brood mare first, leaving the excited two year old and yearling to move next. Mare was put behind electric fencing (wooden posts, not plastic poles) and I went accross the field to get the 2yr old - who was yelling at us to bring her friend back. Mare began answering back and franticly trotting up and down the fence line.
I went through the gate and my 13 year old son was following about 20ft behind me, as he opened the gate the mare broke through the tape and made a mad dash for the gate - I yelled at him to throw the gate open as she would have crashed into him and it and she ran full tilt down the fence and "handbreak" turned through the gate - catching herself on the latch as she did so.
Poor son yelled, what has she done? I turned around to see him white as a sheet and mare galloping past me with an enormous open wound to the shoulder. A neighbour was running accross the field to catch her and she stopped dead 2/3rds of the way up the field. I got to her and she had a tear 15" long and 8" accross in an L shape on her right shoulder. I telephoned the vet at 11.15 and told them what had happened, and lead her slowly into a stable that had just been cleaned and new rubber laid down. My neighbour brought over her first aid kit and between us we managed to dress, pad and bandage the wound to cover it and put a rug over her as she was going into shock. At 11.27 my vet was in the drive asking which stable block I was in. He came in, removed the padding and told us he was referring us to an equine surgeon as it was far to big for him to attempt there. He administered pain killers, antibiotics, anti tetnus and re dressed the wound and we set off for the nearest equine hospital.
At half midday we arrive at the hospital and they were waiting for us, for over three hours she was in surgery, under local with me standing with her head on my shoulder whilst they cut away the full hand span size piece of muscle that could not be saved, stitched in layers and explained that as the wound had gone down and exposed the shoulder bone, there was a chance that if infection got into the joint that "would be the end" as there was no way of flushing it and it would cripple her.
They inserted a drip and completed the stitching - over 60 stitches. The wound was far bigger than we first thought - extending over 12" along her side past her ribs - somehow she had managed to lift the skin and tear the muscle without tearing the skin on top.For 48 hours we waited anxiously to see if we had caught the wound before infection set in, I saw her morning and night and by Monday she was almost her old self, bright eyed and looking for food over the stable door at the vets. She came home on Tuesday evening, complete with injections still to have, powders for the food and box rest for two weeks.
If we had not been there when this happened, the vet told us there would have been very little chance of her surviving, let alone ending up as relatively unscathed as she has - it would have been a career ending injury in a performance horse but she is a broodmare and isn't ridden so the result is cosmetic for us. The wound was sufficiently large as to make it a minor miracle that things have turned out as well as they have - early intervention was the key.
On Sunday I was at the yard by 9 and re-hung all the gates so that I could drill holes into the gate posts and make the spring bolt shut into them - all our latches are now gone.
Oh, the icing on the cake, she was unconfirmed pregnant when she did the accident - the vets scanned her before she went home and she indeed is still pregnant - even after all this trauma!
I have a photo of the stitched wound of anyone who might be interested to see the extent of it - however out of respect for those, like my son, who can't cope with that sort of thing - you will have to pm me with an email address and I will send it to you
Sorry for such a long post, but if anyone benefits from the lessons we learnt it will be well worth it.
