Fire and Tyke's training blog: Tyke's hurt

I have had some requests to see pictures of Tyke's injuries. I will reference pictures in the post and will post them at the bottom of this post. They are rather graphic, so I don't want anyone to accidentally run into them.

Received a call from Darin this morning. Tyke injured himself and wee needed to call a vet. He sent me a couple of pictures (picture 1) and it's bad. Tyke cut up his hind legs quite badly (especially his left hind).

They managed to load him up into Darin's huge stock trailer, and I met them at Block & Bridle Vet in Greeley (my boss told me I had to go, thank you Mike!) When I got there, they had him well drugged and were about halfway through shaving him up. Tyke was an angel during the entire four hours they were working on him. The vet was very impressed at how good of a boy he was.

Tyke - He never moved while we were working on him

His legs look like he stepped through bailing wire and it tightened up around him and he panicked. We couldn't find any wire in his stall, so we don't know for sure what happened. I deeply regret not getting him moved 2 weeks ago... (picture 2) This is an excellent lesson for why you need to teach your horse to "Lead by the Hind Foot". If I had done that before this happened, I believe the outcome would have been entirely different. If you want more information on that, you can watch some info by Warwick Shiller on You Tube www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMfp7xJXkAE or get more detailed information through his subscription at http://www.warwickschiller.com/videos/leading-by-a-hind-foot/.

By tapping several spots, the vet determined that three sterile sections are involved. The fetlock join on the right hind has a small puncture wound, the coffin joint or the pastern joint (maybe both) on the left hind, and the tendon sheath on the left hind is wide open. He severed the superficial digital flexor tendon and mostly severed the deep digital flexor tendon (back tendons) on the left hind and may have severed the common digital extensor tendon (the front tendon) also on the left hind.

She did limb perfusions on both hind legs to try and combat infection. This is an incredibly painful procedure (antibiotics are injected into a superficial vein in the limb below the tourniquet and the tourniquet is left in place for 30 minutes), but he surprised us by being perfect for it as well (picture 3). She even had to try a couple of times on his left hind because the veins kept blowing out...

If you are interested in more detail, I found an article that describes what our vet did pretty well. https://rainlandfarm.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/joint-and-tendon-sheath-infections/

Tyke has been put on stall rest for the foreseeable future. The vet has given him a 60-80% chance of recovery. Movement is the enemy, so we will do our best to keep him as quiet as possible. She has given him shots of pain meds and antibiotics and gave me pills to give him every day to help with the pain.

Tyke is clearly in a lot of pain, but he was so very good during all of these procedures. We were sitting under and behind him while cleaning and inspecting his legs. He was drugged, but not so much that he didn't know we were there. The vet was amazed with how good he was.

Getting ready to leave the vet

It took some work to get him into the trailer after his 4 hours at the vet. He was very willing but in so much pain that he took a while to figure out how to maneuver into the trailer without falling. I felt so bad watching him limp to it and barely be able to get into the trailer...

Managed to get him into the trailer

It is really muddy out in Windsor right now, and Darin doesn't have a pen we can keep clean. Fortunately, Tarrah lives right next door and does have a concrete floored calf pen. While we were at the vet, they worked on cleaning it out for us. Unfortunately, this pen is both isolated (so no other horses near) and requires going up a steep concrete step. Tyke was very hesitant to go up that step, but he was very good and did go up it once he was asked (it was clearly painful!)

Unsure about going up steps to get to his stall...

His temp tonight is 102*. The vet wants to see it stay below 101* to make sure no infection is setting in. We're keeping hay in front of him 24/7 while he is stuck on stall rest. He'll be getting pain meds and electrolytes every night for a while. When I left, he had settled in quite nicely.