This is Skip.
Skip is not the smartest of my four-legged children.
I say that with love and affection. He often finds himself in uncomfortable
predicaments. In fact, when I see pictures like these on the internet I laugh because I think this would be something Skip would totally do.
He is 100% driven by food. He will do anything for food.
As ridiculous as Skip is sometimes, he is such a gentile giant. He is one of the most honest horses I have ever owned.
He wears is heart on his sleeve.
If he wore sleeves.
For the most part, I have been very lucky (knock on wood) in the need for veterinary assistance over the years. I do admit; however, that the two trouble makers, Skip and Henry, have been the primary cause of what vet bills I have had to pay over the years.
Right after we moved into our new house, Skip managed to evade
stitches in his leg. Just barely.
Well unfortunately, He was not so lucky four days ago.
I went out to feed Friday morning and I found Skip standing in the paddock with his chest tore wide open. My heart started racing and panic set in. I have never had a wound like that before to deal with. I called our vet right away as I drove the kids to school.
Lucky for me, Dr Walters was able to rearrange his schedule first thing in the morning and came right out to put Skip back together. While I waited I did some investigating to see what could have caused such a significant wound.
Remember how I said he was driven by food?
Well on the other side of this 7+ foot wall is where we keep some of our hay. I have wrestled with Skip the last couple of years for stealing hay from over the wall. He will literally rear up on his hind legs, stretch his neck out over the wall and take hold of whatever he can get. There have been several mornings that I have come out to feed my horses and they are standing knee deep in broken hay bales. Happily chomping on the grand buffet Skip has provided for them.
As you can see on the far right side there is a piece of plywood closing off the space above the normal wall. Each time Skip finds a new way over the wall to snatch hay, I recruit Handy Man to make the wall higher. Unfortunately, this was the only section of the wall that was not over 7 feet tall.
Do you see that tiny little green hook on the wall? On the 4x4 post.
In my stalls, I have simple bucket hooks hanging. If we need to hang water or feed buckets, these little hooks work great.
Notice the circle guard protecting the bucket hook and preventing a horse from cutting himself on the hook...
hahahaha
Well, I can only imagine that my genius, Skip, continued to rear up against the wall, over and over, hitting the bucket hook in his attempt to reach hay until he finally broke the weld off on that circular guard.
Left unprotected, the hook was wide open for injury. Unfortunately, Skip met his fate and the hook won.
For the record, I no longer have bucket hooks hanging ANYWHERE!
The pictures below get a bit graphic for those with a weak stomach. Just FYI
Dr Walters arrived and he got right to work. First he gave Skip a little horsey cocktail. Then a local anesthetic.
Though, the jerk deserved to be stitched without it!
Dr Walters cleaned the would out really good.
Then he had to shave all of the hair away so he could see where to stitch and help keep the wound clean down the road.
It was quite the laceration.
Good grief Skip! All this for an extra nibble of food. I think he needs a serious intervention.
Dr Walters grabbed a stool and settled in for a sewing party.
Dr Walters stitched a few stitches at the top and then secured a drainage tube in place.
He then started stitching from the bottom up and just before he closed the wound off, he fished the drainage tube up and into place.
Two little stitches to hold the drainage tube in place and we were done.
22 stitches in total spanning nearly ten inches in length! Quite the laceration!
Prognosis was good.
Once again I am reminded how lucky I am to have such an amazing equine vet in Dr Walters. He is an extraordinary human being!
When we were all finished, Skip pressed his head to my hip and I gave him a big hug around the head.
He may be a bone head sometimes, but I love him.
Stitches looked great. I was super pleased with the outcome. Now my job was to just keep it clean, dry and healing.
I fashioned a horsey cone of shame to his halter. Hopefully this would keep him from scratching or biting at the stitches in the days to come.
Of course rule number one in owning a horse is to NEVER leave their halters on in a paddock or pasture. They can get the halter hooked on something and break their necks.
What are the odds of that actually happening right? hahahaha famous last words! So, I tied the halter with some bailing twine vs buckling the nylon strap. In the somewhat
unlikely event that he were to get his halter hooked on a fence, the twine should break and not his neck.
Saturday things were looking great. Sunday was great as well. I was administering antibiotics and pain meds twice a day as well as cleaning the wound 2-3 times a day. He was staying relatively calm and mellow and I was super hopeful that this was going to heal up nicely.
Monday morning everything was great, looked the same.
Monday afternoon I was working from home. I was typing away on the computer when I heard thundering hooves outback and ran to the window to see what on earth was happening. The horses were all loose in the bordering pasture. Running! Bucking! Kicking! Turning up dust and Skip was right there in the middle of the action.
For the love of all things holy!!! Really?
Are you kidding me?!?! The hot wire fence chooses to short out at a time like this. Noooooo
By the time I flipped on a pair of boots and ran out to the paddock, the charades were over. None the less, the damage was done.
Skip ripped out all but 6 of his stitches.
Dr Walters returned last night and we weighed our options of restitching his chest (which probably would not hold a second time) or leave the healing to nature.
We made the decision to leave it open. It will take a little longer to heal, might not be as perfect of a scar, but it will heal none the less. We both just have a feeling he will tear it open again and there is no way to wrap a chest to protect a wound on an animal this big.
A few positive vibes our way would be appreciated. We are looking at a long two to three month process of getting this thing to knit together now.
It's a good thing I love this big dumb animal.
