Worst injury you've seen a horse come back from.

Shantara

Shantara

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Just a random thought of the day. Is it a weird thought? I don't know. Probably!

Anyway, what is the worst injury you have seen a horse go through and completely come back from?
I'm very interested in how far the human (or horse) body can be pushed and still have a happy ending.
I don't really have any stories I'm afraid, but I want to hear yours!
 
only really bad injury i have seen is a horse who had over reached in field and actually ripped its hoof half off, when walking her foot stayed on floor eventhough leg lifted until last minute. vet actually put his little finger all the way in
Miraculously it didnt get infected and she hadnt damaged any of the important tissues so after months of box rest, she is now back fully fit with no sign of injury.
 
Oh have a look in vets section here - there was an amazing set of photos with a poor horse that had the whole of it's side opened up (you could see rib bones!) then healed to a tiny scar!

Personally for me a horse that reared up at a gateway when being turned out and came down with a post up inside it's armpit sort of between the skin and bones 3/4 of the way to it's withers! Huge wound that couldn't be stitched - vet was getting his whole arm up to clean splinters out from inside it - smell was gross for weeks - but totally recovered with no ongoing ill effects !
 
Many years ago a mare I had out on loan sliced her leg open in a fence. Cut from the top of her inner thigh right down to just above her coronet, at it's widest was 3-4 inches, could see tendon and bone with not enough skin left to cover it all - looked like something in a butchers.

Took over 50 stitches, and a ridiculous amount of bandages, but 9 months of intensive care, she just had a faint scar for the most of it.
 
My NF broke his hip as a two yr old. That was pretty bad. Six months box rest & lame for over a year.
He's rising 9 now, will always be a bit wonky but he copes perfectly well & we do dressage, hacking & the odd bit of jumping.
 
My horse was racing at Huntingdon, Andrew Thornton was on him, should have pulled up but kept him going. Horse fell 2 out, back hoof came forward and thundered into his chest between the front legs, opened up a HUGE hole and severed all bar 1 artery to the heart.

Horse got up and galloped back to me where we took the saddle off and used the number cloth to plug the hole while the horse bounced on adhrenaline all the way to the vets box with blood quite litterly pumping out of his body at high speeds.

Got him into the vets box where his owner rocked up, turned round, spewed his guts up and between spewing he managed to blurt out to save the horse no matter the cost. So there I am holding a horse that is quite litterly bleeding to death in front of and all the vets can do is sedate him to slow everything down, stuff the hole up with a role and a half of cotton wool and stitched it over. They gave him a 2% survival rate. If he was still alive in an hour they would move him to the box next door. The floor of the vets box was an inch deep in running blood with more down the drain. And that's where I had to leave him.

He collapsed in the treatment box but he got back up. So he moved next door. We got a call saying that he was down again and could the vets have the owners number to put him down, during this call the horse got back up again. They gave him 2 hours at 5% survival rate and they would try to transport him to Newmarket vets. 2 hours later we got a call saying that he had been down twice more, he kept getting up and because he kept gettingup under his own steam the owner wouldn't let them quit. So Jeff went to Newmarket. He collapsed 3 times IN the truck and he fell down the ramp into a heap on the floor. And he STILL got up!

So strung up on the opperating table with still a 5% survival rate, 14 vets (more out of noseyness than need!) 8 hours and MAJOR heart surgery to reattach everything back where it should be. He collapsed AGAIN in his stable 2 hours after surgery but he got back up!

3 months later he comes home from Newmarket looking an absolute wreck. By now we are just coming into June and so he goes out into the summer Hay fields for 2 months. He comes in looking a great fat heffalump and he resumes his racehorse training ...

He raced for another 4 years, winning 5 more races and placing numerous times before doing a 3 timer at Ayr (during which he injured himself and had joint flush surgery) before running in a Grade 1 and finishing his career at Perth before retiring sound to me to be my show horse at the grand age of 11.

He has never had a days bother with his heart, the only way you would know that there was a problem is the thumb sized dent in his chest just to the left of the centre and the massive dent in his owners bank ballance :D

I was 16, at only my 3rd ever race meeting, never looked after the horse or ridden it and I had never in my life seen so much blood and carnage and I honestly didn't know what to so I just held his head up to try to keep him on his feet while he was space caked. When he came back into work my boss gave me the chance to ride him seeing as we had been through so much but she thought he would be too much for me as he was a big, strong, buzzy 17.2hh horse. We clicked. Whether it was because of what we went through or maybe we were always destined to get on I don't know. I don't care I just know that he is my friend for life and every single day I am thankful that his owner is a stubborn git that wouldn't take no for an answer!

And to this day I still have a MAJOR dislike of Andrew Thornton! The boss stopped using him too!
 
For me, its was my mums horse, he went through a wooden fence, staked himself in the stomach! Had a massive flap of skin dangling aswell (makes me sudder thinking about it!!) He made a full recovery, cannot even see the scar, no white hair,
 
I worked for an eventer who bred their own horses. As a 2 yr old one of her boys tried to jump the field fence and flipped over it landing on his head and breaking his neck in 2 places. He survived and actually became a very successful 4* eventer.

Out hunting a few seasons ago a little horse got caught in a gate way and the latch went in to her near side quarter, leaving two deep puncher holes. They couldn't be stitched and had to wear a bed sheet under her rugs to stop and dirt getting in. She recovered well with only 2 very small scars.
 
My old YO's mare was having a gallop about with mine and slipped and fell onto something, to this day nobody knows what. Anyway it peeled her side like a can opener and left a nice rack of ribs exposed. Vet stitched it all up; I was sure it would get infected. But a drain, various creams, and lots of fly spray later she eventually healed. You can see a saucer shaped depression where it was, but that's minute compared to the original wound.
 
Nudibranch. Where I used to keep my horses a horse came in from the field with an injury like that. No one ever worked out how he had done it. Looked horrid but sorted really quickly and healed brilliantly.
 
My boss' farrier owns a horse who ran through a fence and gloved his hind leg, from hock to fetlock. The first vet that saw it said there was nothing they could do, the skin was sagging around the fetlock like a baggy sock. The leg was just open flesh.

The second vet he called pulled the skin back up the leg, and with a lot of hard work, blood and sweat, the horse recovered. He went on to win the Welsh Cup ( Cwpan Cymru) last year. His name is Infinatey :)

http://s4c.co.uk/rasus/cgi-bin/rasus.pl?rm=race_watch;tx=124;race=1193;l=e
 
My ex event horse was doing some canter work up a track, the jockey whom was riding her at the time failed to take into account my horse is spooky, she was also holding the horse and then digging in the spurs then letting her go! :( Anyway the horse spooked at a puddle jumped and landed on a slight incline, she immediately went lame.

She had the leg scanned and had put holes in her superficial and deep flexor tendon so severely that the vet said she would never come right and advised pts...

She was turned away for four years later she was brought back into work and jumped upto 1 meter with me again and had a foal, the jockey never rode her again! :mad: she's now just my hacking horse as well as the odd dressage test :)it was such a shame as she could've gone all the way but after that incident it wasn't meant to be. She still gives me hours if pleasure :)
 
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Buds_mum said:
EKW that had me on tears. Would love to see a pic of the boy wonder?
Click to expand...

Any excuse ;)

3 years after.
JeffClear.jpg


3 jumps after the above pic :D Dumb bum horse!
JeffDance.jpg


In his new career
JeffFifeWalk.jpg
 
freckles22uk said:
What a story, he sure wanted to survive, and wow for the owner for paying for it... he looks fab now :D
Click to expand...

The worst bit is is that that is only half of his story! Lol! He also struck into a front fetlock and missed the tendon sheath by a hairs breadth and thus went for a double round of joint flush surgery - though for this one he did win the race and the 6k prize just covered that vets fee! He put a 50% hole in the tendon & tendon sheath in a hind leg going round the fetlock - he had 6months to try to come sound to be a field ornament - scan it now and there is 5% of scar tissue the rest is brand new perfectly formed tendon tissue. In training he was also a chonic bleeder and smashed himself off the road and spent 2 weeks stiff as a board unable to move in a stable. He's not the brightest button in the box upon occasion :D
 
Over the years I have seen many bad injuries. I long ago came to the conclusion that, no matter what you do for safety, horses will do their best to harm themselves.
Observations show that if you leave harrows in a field, rusty cars, junk, hanging barb wire and rusty nails, then the blighters will never do themselves harm!

Last August yearling colt caught himself on a staple gate latch (the gate was tied open) from the damage it was done at a gallop.

20120808_1289.jpg


End of November

20121210_1399.jpg


This was a nasty injury but, it was not as bad as many I have seen.

Two brood mares busted open a gate when frightened by deer I think, galloped down the track to the road gate, stopped and then galloped back.
The metal gate was bent nearly in half and across the track, they must have tried to get through the gate together and one was shoved against the gate latch leaving a goos double handful of lung on the latch.
The hole was so big that I could actually see her heart beating. She survived and foaled a couple of months later.
 
Mine ripped his leg open severing the tendon twice, punctured the joint capsule, fractured bone in hock. Had emergency surgery during which tendon had to be REMOVED leaving him with an empty hole down the front of his leg, the chip of bone removed, the joint flushed and the skin derided and then pulled over the wound as essentially a sticking plaster (as the vet described it- they expected the skin to die and him need a skin graft (it didn't!).

IMG_0575-1.jpg

IMG_0576-1.jpg


I'd have taken surviving to be a light hack.

4 months in a Robert Jones bandage then extensive physio. He had to re-learn how to use his leg without the tendon. Canter was a pitiful hopping action with both hind legs used together and lots of stumbling. Walking involved dragging the leg behind him.

Now he can do this:
DAC9B1EC-B42D-4791-AC04-5FAE084D5AB4-2574-000004396C3982C9_zps7ee7e665.jpg


C888548C-98A7-4C3C-97EC-1CC8595D43C4-2574-00000439721162DB_zps33dab172.jpg
 
Id a 3/4 bred gelding years ago . He was in the meadow with three others one summer .. One day i noticed he was standing very still. In same place near ditch... I went down to him and seen he d his leg below the cannon bone caught in bita wire...he d been pulling at it to free it.. He was 3 yrs old.. I unhoked him.. Totally lame .. I washed it and called vet.. He said he ll always be lame as he done some serois damage but leave him few weeks .. Atibiotucs etc given. I kept washing it and all the usual stuff... 2 months later.. Still lame.... 4 months stil lame.. Vet said he ll not do ... Put him down.. So no i didnt do it.. I kept him . Creamed him... Etc... An old man said to me he ll come right it ll just take time... So two years later... One day he d d no limp!! I tenderly kept at him bit lunging slwly etc.. Then i broke him he was great..we hunted and show jumped... Even though he on the light side.. So it worked out grand.
 
New gelding arrived at the barn I was boarding at and was turned out with two other geldings. The two geldings chased the new guy around until new guy decided he'd had enough and tried to jump the fence. All of the fence posts on the ranch had caps on, except for this one, as the geldings had chewed the cap off and no one had got round to replacing it. The horse, a little quarter horse who definitely wasn't up for a Grand Prix showjumping career, didn't clear the fence and impaled himself on the post, from underneath the foreleg right to the top of his shoulder just below the wither. One of the trainers found the horse hanging there on the fence, probably sh a t herself, and called the vet, the barn owner, the horse's owner. In the meantime, the horse reared up and freed himself from the fence. They had to hook up the nearest trailer to the nearest pickup to bring the horse to where he could be treated and stalled, as the horse was going to into shock and wasn't going to walk the 50m from his paddock to the stalls. The vet said the post had narrowly missed the lung. Horse made a 100% recovery.
 
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my last horse fell onto a fence with a nail in - straight through his tendon

8 weeks in leahurst and a major op he lived. was only a pet though/very light hack


eventually (2 years on) after a year of box rest and walking out, he whacked a shoe off and went dog lame we called it a day (many other bits too)!!


so yes he survuved initial surgery for 2 years, but for him it was kinder to call it a day.
 
Well, my sisters horse got laminitis from an injury to a leg, the weight on one leg caused it, 10,000 to fix. he gave 5 years healthy, now is in vetinary hospital 3 weeks, infection that caused tendon problems, due to a blackthorn, 6500 later, he still isnt out of the woods, hopefully in the next few days. xx
But no guarantee yet. xx
 
SarahThomas said:
My boss' farrier owns a horse who ran through a fence and gloved his hind leg, from hock to fetlock. The first vet that saw it said there was nothing they could do, the skin was sagging around the fetlock like a baggy sock. The leg was just open flesh.

The second vet he called pulled the skin back up the leg, and with a lot of hard work, blood and sweat, the horse recovered. He went on to win the Welsh Cup ( Cwpan Cymru) last year. His name is Infinatey :)

http://s4c.co.uk/rasus/cgi-bin/rasus.pl?rm=race_watch;tx=124;race=1193;l=e
Click to expand...

Absolutely off topic, Sarah I used to ride my horse to Tai'rgwaith and stand up on a bank to watch the racing. I also used to use the track as gallops in the days when we could ride across it.
 
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