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Case Study In Point
Recently, the difficulties and dangers of puncture wounds were presented to Lubbock, Texas, farrier Zach Dicken and me when we were shoeing together for a day.
One stop in our day involved what had been described to us as a slightly lame horse with no obvious cause.
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Zach Dicken, a farrier from Lubbock, Texas, works on a horse that was found with a 3-inch nail penetrating its hoof, piercing all the way to the deep flexor tendon. |
Apparently the owner’s examination wasn’t too thorough, since the horse was 3-legged lame, had an abscess that had busted out the medial bulb of the left front foot and about half an inch of what turned out to be a 3-inch nail protruding from his foot. The nail went straight in the sulcus, about an inch forward of the heel.
We immediately called the owner and told him the horse should be radiographed before the nail was pulled. He, like every other horse owner I have dealt with in the same situation, said he didn’t have the time and told us to just pull the nail.
Since Dicken and I knew this was an unusual case, we began taking pictures as we worked. We pulled the nail, which a tape measure showed was buried in the foot, 2 1/4 inches. The hole immediately began to drain large amounts of fluid.
We built a hospital plate, doctored the wound with sugardine and bolted the shoe and plate in place. The horse was immediately relieved. The owner, who had never made an appearance, was told over the phone to get the horse penicillin and a tetanus shot, and to clean and treat the wound at least every other day.
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