Re: cuts and such

[Farafix@aol.com]

Maggie,

Last yr my stallion cut the front of his cannon bone crossing the Shenendoah
on the Old Dominion, required 2 stitches.  Things were looking pretty good
until the morning I was to leave for a week long family vaction about 10 days
after he was stitched up.  I called a friend who's a small animal vet to check
him & call me if I should come home, but bless her, she and her 8 yr old
(holding the stallion!) cleaned out the incision.  She said it was common when
she was in vet school to have the tissue around stitches die (on horses).  She
kept telling me over the phone that he was ok  but he would have a lot of
proud flesh (I was just thankful she had taken care of him!!), but today he
has just the tiniest of scars, about the size of a pinky fingernail clipping.
The scar got smaller & smaller over the summer & fall.  
So if your horse's wound looks nasty, it may also get smaller with time.
Seems the trick is to keep it clean & the dead tissue out.  The vet that had
stitiched my horse up also gave me some paste antibiotics to give him for a
few days, so that probably also helped.

Good luck!

Nancy
& Tempo, only slightly scarred because his rider strayed too far downstream
from the floating milk containers!