Horse Attempts To Kill Self - But Is Apparently OK

Yesterday was a day with a little too much excitement. First, after I got done with my barn chores and was back home, I got a call from Sugar's owner that Dawn had run into a fence - she was on the way out to check on her. I was getting ready to go over, not knowing what I was going to find, and she called me back to say that Dawn was apparently OK other than some small cuts on her neck. But she brought Dawn in, and they got to the barn just as I got there. Dawn has cuts on both sides of her neck, about half-way down her neck - she apparently ran into our 4-board wood fence with the front of her neck. She also has a scrape on the left side of her jaw just in front of the throatlatch. I rinsed off the cuts with cold water and put some Nolvasan ointment on, and gave her 1 gram of bute by mouth for the swelling.

The mares had been running and Dawn was after Misty, while racing Sugar. Apparently, while chasing Misty, she lost track of where she was while flinging her head and just ran full on into the fence. Both top fence boards were broken - and these were very sturdy 6" deep and almost a full 1" wide boards, 8' long. Since she seemed comfortable grazing, and the cuts weren't so bad as to require stitches, I put her back out for the day. Fortunately, the damaged fence is between two pastures that we're using as a combined pasture, so my husband came out and sawed off the broken pieces and we'll have better repairs done when our fence guy comes later this month.

And I got to see some old friends - I trailered a horse that used to be at our barn from one barn to another as a favor to his owner, who is a friend - the horse's name is Jack and he's an off the track TB. He's a sweet boy, and I spent a lot of time with him working on leading when he came to our barn - at that time he had no idea how to lead and was a tad hard to handle. When his owner and I went to pick him up, he stuck his nose into my chest and proceeded to sniff me all over - it was pretty clear that he remembered who I was. He loaded like a gentleman and when we got to his new barn, his owner, who is a very petite lady, had me lead him down to the barn from the trailer - he was very excited, but was able to remember his lessons well. It was good to see both of them again.

In the evening, when I brought Dawn in, she was pretty swollen and sore. Her jaw wasn't too bad - just some scrapes and some swelling - nothing seems too damaged. The cuts on both sides of her neck are swollen on each side of the cuts. I expect she ran full tilt into the fence, striking it front on (second board from the top) in the middle of her neck, and also the top board with the left side of her jaw. Knowing Dawn, I expect she'd done a head fling, or lunged at Misty to bite her, to the right just before impacting the fence almost head on, hence the odd combination of injuries.

She seemed perfectly able to eat and drink and was moving just fine in the pasture, trotting and cantering at bring-in time. After I fed, she let me know that eating out of her hay bag was uncomfortable by running her teeth up and down the wall. (She usually has her hay in a bag because it helps cut down the mess in her stall - she's a messy eater.) So I took out the hay bag and put her hay on the floor, which seemed to help.

Our wonderful p.m. barn lady was going by the barn later - she's taking care of Charisma, whose owner is on vaction - so I had her check on Dawn. She said that Dawn was getting a large hematoma between her front legs on the left side - the left side of her neck was where most of the swelling was, so this wasn't surprising as the fluids migrated down due to gravity. I don't think she hit the fence in the chest area - I think the hematoma is just from the neck injury. I went over to check - her neck and the hematoma were pretty sore, so I gave her another gram of bute. And we took some pictures - our barn lady's cell phone does a pretty good job.

Here's the hematoma:

Here's a view of the neck injury from the front - the "thumbprints" to the left and at spots below the injury, and the triangular scar on her chest are all from old injuries - Dawn is, shall we say, a bit accident prone. The white stuff is Nolvasan ointment.

And here's the left side of her neck. The wound is gaping a little much to my liking due to the swelling - she may come out of this with another scar.

But he doesn't look too worried - that's a bit of bute paste on her mouth:

With Dawn, there's always (too much) excitement to be had! This morning, things didn't look any worse and the swelling on the sides of the cut on the left side of her neck had sunk down a bit. She's clearly still pretty sore, but it appears that she's going to be OK.

We won't be able to do that much riding until the various swellings go down - the hematoma will likely affect the girth area, and flexing her neck's likely to be pretty uncomfortable. So it might be time for working on our patience exercises - some just-standing-around and ground tying - and some leading (patterns with poles and cones) and perhaps some clicker work with scary objects.