Horse Injuries
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Zoey's Injury
December 21, 2009

It had snowed a few days before and my horses were gathered around there feed bins waiting patiently for me to come out and give them some hay. As I carried out and filled the bins with hay I noticed that there was blood on the snow! Right away I knew one of the horses must of got hurt. I climbed over the gate, too much snow made the gate hard to open, and I investigated all the horses for injuries. Jack seemed fine so I moved over to Jazzmine and once again nothing. Then when I got to Zoey I saw it. A big gash on her left front leg! "Zoey,what did you do?" As if she really understood what I was saying.

I grabbed Zoey's halter and lead rope, brought her out to the front porch where I repeatedly called "MOM!" until she opened the door. Then I told her what happened to Zoey and asked her to get some Epson Salt, warm water and paper towels. I immediately started to clean out the injury and get the blood off her leg. It was cold out and I didn't want Zoey to get frost bite since she had an exposed wet cut so i took her down to one of the stalls, which have a stone wall on two of the sides and the roof is the bottom of a barn. There is never any wind that gets into the stalls so the horses enjoy being put in them when there is bad weather. I created my own cross ties out of the lead rope I had and a hay string. I could tell that the injury hurt Zoey cause every time i touched it with the paper towel she tried to pull her foot away but i knew i had to get the cut clean so I could wrap it up.

After the gash was all clean I took some Neosporin, which comes in handy when dealing with an injury, horse related or not LOL, and I put a big blob of that on the cut. Then I took some paper towel and wrapped them around her leg. Vet Wrap is another handy tool for horse injuries and is a good thing to have laying around just incase. I wrapped Zoey's leg in Vet Wrap when I was all done and set up a stall for her over night. I didn't want her to be out in the snow with an open cut cause frost bite would NOT be very fun to try and treat.

*Update! March 28, 2010 Zoey has made a full recovery! Today I was lungeing her and was doing great. Its getting warmer and a new season is about to start! Zoey's Training continues, so lets hope we see an improvement from last season!*

Treatment
-Clean the wound with Epson Slat water solution
-Apply Neosporin
-Wrap leg up with paper towels(or cotton balls, either will work) then with Vet Wrap
-Repeat process until wound has scabbed over then monitor to ensure that it heals properly

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