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Approximately 80-percent of all laceration injuries are preventable.
Hidden
Hazards
Story
by Summer Best. Photos by Jill Haight.
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Take
a look at your horse property. See any hidden hazards? Random
pieces of roofing tin strewn anywhere? Or perhaps a horse trailer
parked in the pasture? Little bolts or nails sticking out in
the stall? A piece of barbed-wire here and there?
Horses are injury-prone enough on their own. When we allow debris
to accumulate in their living areas, we're asking for a trouble.
"The majority of laceration injuries are preventable,"
says Dr. Jennifer Fowinkle of Central Florida Equine Hospital
in Sanford, Florida. "I would say that 80-percent of the
laceration wounds I see could have been avoided. It's mostly
a matter of owners using good sense - horse sense - and taking
time to check things out before putting a horse in a situation."
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The longer you are around horses, the more you get an eye for
seeing potential hazards, Dr. Fowinkle says.
"Having debris in a field might seem like no big deal for
a long time. Horses can be turned out for 10 or 15 years in
a field with an old trailer, a truck or maybe a Bobcat parked
out there.
"Horse owners think it's no big deal to have equipment
in that pasture with their horses," she continues. "Then
one day, the horse isn't looking where it's going, and it runs
right into it."
Dr. Fowinkle sees six to 12 traumatic laceration injuries per
year that could very possibly have been avoided.
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Lacy Kittle's 26-year-old mare, "Sugar," is lucky
to be alive after her February 1 run-in with the gooseneck horse
trailer. |
Shoulder
Slice
February 1, 2005, seemed to be finishing up like any other day
at Freddie's Feed & Seed in Mims, Florida. Lacy Kittles,
who helps run the store with her mother, Barbara, left work
around 6 p.m. and drove home to feed their horses. All was fairly
routine until her 26-year-old mare, "Sugar," made
a beeline for the gate.
"She actually got out and ran into the yard," Lacy
remembers. "She didn't want to be caught."
Lacy had some choice words to explain how she felt about the
mare's antics at that moment. But what happened next was more
than just an inconvenient little jaunt around the yard. The
mare's mischievous moments soon turned into a horrible disaster.
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"She
was running," Lacy recalls of the moment. "She didn't
want to be caught, and she plowed past me. Then she looked over
at my mom as she was running, and she just slammed into the
trailer."
Sugar's left shoulder hit the trailer first. The force was so
powerful, she shoved the three-horse gooseneck a good 2 feet.
Sugar's shoulder was torn wide open, and she had a wound that
stretched all the way across her ribcage and dug a deep, scary
hole into her hip.
"We saw her take a few trotting steps, then she started
leaning like she might fall," Lacy says. "Then we
just saw blood squirting everywhere. If we hadn't been there,
she might have bled to death."
Lacy and her mother, Barbara, grabbed towels to begin applying
pressure to the massive wound. They immediately called for Dr.
Fowinkle, who was on the scene within an hour.
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The left
shoulder required the most stitches. Dr. Fowinkle spent several
hours on the initial emergency wound. |
"It
was an L-shaped wound, about a foot and a half by a foot and
a half, on the mare's left shoulder," Dr. Fowinkle explains.
"She was lucky it didn't involve the bone."
Dr. Fowinkle worked on the mare for more than five hours. Drainage
devices were inserted to keep Sugar's wound as dry as possible
during the long healing process. Stints were applied to give
support underneath the skin surface. Dr. Fowinkle applied six
stitching packs - more than 50 stitches to the massive wounds. |
Sugar was given antibiotics for one month, twice-daily cleaning
and treatment of the wound, and stall rest. Many stitches did
not hold, and parts of the flesh rotted, but today, she's out
running and bucking in the pasture. Lacy feels that the mare
will experience a full recovery. But her scars will be big ones.
Six weeks after the accident, fluid still seeped from the hole
in the mare's hip.
Had Sugar not escaped that day, the accident might never have
happened. The trailer was parked by the barn - not in a pasture.
"I've met several people who have had horses get hurt just
like this," Lacy says. "One horse broke its shoulder
when it hit a trailer, and another horse injured its eye socket.
We're just really lucky she didn't have any broken bones."
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Sugar's left
hip still has a large, circular puncture from the incident. |
Young
horses are at a higher risk of injury from foreign objects in
a pasture or stall, thanks to their higher energy levels and
curiosity. Senior horses are still at risk, however. Sugar,
at 26, has spent nearly all her life on Lacy and Barbara's property.
"Unfortunately, I see this sort of injury more often than
I should, and many times, it is preventable," Dr. Fowinkle
says.
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A
few avoidables |
1. Barbed wire. "Barbed wire is made for cows, not
for horses," Dr. Fowinkle says. "I can't tell
you how many times I've run across horse injuries from
barbed wire."
2. Metal barrels that have rusted through.
3. Tin roof pieces.
4. Garbage in fields.
5. Extruding bolts and nails in stalls, pastures and other
horse areas.
6. Double-ended snaps that can injure a horse's eye. Always
face the bolt side/snap side away from the horse's face
when hanging buckets.
7. Fencing other than barbed wire that horses can lodge
a foot through.
8. Stalls that horses can lodge a foot through. "Horses
can kick through boards that are as close as 1 inch apart,"
Dr. Fowinkle says. "I have even seen a horse kick
through boards that were flush with each other. Remember
that when the horse kicks with that big thrust, the foot
goes through the cracks, and the boards bend outward.
Then, the horse's foot is stuck through the crack, and
it can't pull back through."
9. Bungee-type cross-ties that stretch when horses pull
back. These have a tendency to stretch all the way until
the bungees break, flinging one end into the horses body,
potentially causing major injury.
10. Parked trailers, trucks, tractors, etc. in fields
or in any area that a horse will be potentially running
through.
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Freelance
writer/photographer Summer Best is an avid equestrian
and owner of SunHorse Publishing & Promotions in
Ocala, Fl. |
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