It started like any other morning. 7:30 Am and i’m out at the barn to feed. There was a freeze over night and the grass was white. Damn it! My weather app didn’t say below freezing. Luckily my ponies are pretty fuzzy already. I threw some hay into the paddock and went to prepare their feed. Thats when I heard the noise. A deer had tried to jump over my the fence and got caught up in the high tensile. It made a terrible noise, I saw the deer get loose and run like her deer hair was caught on fire though my pasture all the way down to the trees at the end of the field. The horses heard it too and freaked out. They were running all over the field. Then I heard the noise again. Damn it again i was pretty sure the deer was stuck in the wire fence behind the trees! I ran down not knowing what I would do if there was a deer caught up in the fence. When I got there she was gone. Phew, crisis averted!
I started walking back to the paddock and the ladies were still very excited and were jumping and cantering around. When i got close enough i noticed it. Jezebel was bleeding… A lot! Right front inside it was a bloody mess. When i was able to catch her i could see, the cut was pretty bad and there was skin hanging. I was able to get her into her stall, i put some water in a bucket grabbed a brand new sponge and assessed what i was looking out. It looked terrible,knee to ankle, skin hanging and a bloody mess. I couldn’t tell how deep. I called the vet. The on call vet said he’d be there asap! I squirted it with betadine, dismantled a diaper to use as padding and loosely vet wrapped it and paced like a crazy lady until the vet got there.
When my vet showed up he had good news and bad news. The good news was it looked like she just skinned herself. The bad news it was a downward facing skin flap. That means shes gonna lose that flap. She will have a scar but maybe with some luck it wont be that bad. He used the hanging skin as a cover for the wound (it will die cuz theres no blood source and have to be clipped off at the follow up) He bandaged her up, gave her banamine for pain, gave me new Bute since mine was expired and then he gave her a shot of Excede, a long acting antibiotic. So no SMZs. My vet liked this better then the SMZs for preventing an infection. It has a risk of knots at the injections site so my vet split it and did half in each side of her neck. So far no knots.
Poor Jez has to be in her stall or the paddock for a week. So i’ll be throwing a lot of hay and theres still grass in my pasture, ugh! At the follow up hopefully she will be healed enough to get her bandage off, get that skin flap snipped off and go back out in the field. I’m to watch her for lameness, swelling, and cold feet. No riding until after her follow up next week. Which blows because I had been given some riding homework with Jez to do this week by Michelle so thats gonna have to be pushed back a week or so.
I’m so happy I decide to build that paddock. it was a stretch financially to do it but i’m so glad I sucked it up and found a way to rob Peter to pay Paul and make it happen cuz it is sure coming in handy now.
Welcome home ponies!
Ugh! Ponies! WHY?!
At least she’s at home and watching and caring for her should be easier (at least, closer) than if she were still somewhere else. I’m not jealous of all the injured people and ponies lately.