BIG Owie.

Squeamish people, you should consider yourself warned.... DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINKS if you'd rather not see a lot of blood. There is a little blood in the post photos too, but I linked to the worst of it.

Just after the morning feeder grained all the horses he heard a loud bang and came to find my poor pony with a bloody face. Junior managed to wound himself pretty severely this time. I believe this is face injury number 3 or even 4 within 4 months. This is the worst by far. I got a text just before 10:00 from the BO that he cut his face and that photos had been sent to the vet and the vet was coming out. I called her and asked how bad it was and she informed me she wasn't there but the feeder had sent photos to the vet and the vet's opinion was that faces heal well but a stitch would make it heal prettier. "A stitch" huh? I left work and headed to the barn. I go there to find my poor pony like this:


It may be hard to tell what's really there, but it's a big inverted triangle flap of skin. And blood. And it had already been hosed off. Yack. Dr. Johnson came out about 30 minutes after I got there. He seemed surprised at the severity and said he wasn't able to see that much from the photo. He thought for a bit and then we brought him out to the sunlight for the work. Junior was sedated and the whole area was washed with betadine and saline. THAT part was gross. I had to look away right after I took a picture. There was some splatter on my shoes. Hurl. Then Dr. J injected a bunch of blocker and stitched him up with 14 stitches. He looked just awful when we were done. His whole face was covered with betadine, saline, blood, and this silver spray that looked like RustOLeum.


The BO had arrived right before we were finished and she immediately went to work removing the board/bolt that we determined to be the culprit. It's left over from a long gone corner feeder. It's just 2" boards attached to the stall walls and there is a small bolt and washer on the top of one of the boards. Totally unassuming looking and though I knew it was there I was not concerned about it. She felt absolutely awful, but it wasn't her fault. The stall is safe, my pony is just accident prone. He has a scar on his face from long ago, which you may have noticed in some pictures so this habit did not start with US and I can't be entirely to blame. She removed the board with the bolts and installed a mat over the wall so he can't scratch on the metal corner plate either. I think he needs a padded stall.

I left him calm but alert in another stall while she was working so I could get back to work for a meeting and to apologize to my class for abandoning them to watch a movie without me this morning.

I ran to Target and picked up some peroxide and laundry detergent (to get the blood off my jacket sleeve...) and headed back to the barn. The BO had already gone out for peroxide and had cleaned most of his face so the face that met me was much nicer to look at than the face I left.

He's to stay in the stall or be hand-walked for 3-4 days to give the healing a good start. Then he can go back to normal turnout routine. If it starts to swell or starts draining puss I am supposed to call Dr. Johnson back. If not, then the stitches come out in 2 weeks. I'm hoping free-choice hay and a few walks a day will help him stay sane in the stall.

PLEASE say a prayer or cross your fingers, squeeze your rabbits's foot, wish upon a star or whatever you do to hope that he lets this heal without pulling stitches out or rubbing it. I'll keep you posted.

Here is a link to the more icky pictures. If it asks for a password, the password is "Junebug".