Good Morning!! Todays post is going to be a bit different than our normal luxury tack or travel posts. Today we’re taking it back to our roots and talking day to day situations at the barn with horses. This is based off a real scenario as shown in the photos, but I’ll be presenting this in a hypothetical situation so you guys will gain some insight on what to do in this situation.

If you are squeamish, uncomfortable with open wounds or veterinarian visits I would advise you to click off this blog right about now. I normally don’t post these sort of things, but they are great learning tools as unfortunate as they are to go through and see. That being said, I will be walking you through the step by step process to remedy this situation to the best of everyone’s abilities.

Hypothetically, you have just gotten to the barn to start your day, whether you’re a trainer or a boarder and someone stops you to bring a wound to your attention. You should go out and pull said horse up from its pasture or stall to 1, confirm the injury is 100% real and on the horse in question. Once you’ve made the confirmation, halter up and off to tie them up in a separate location from other horses. At this point I had confirmed Pocahontas had been kicked and I brought her up to the lesson office to be tended to. Beware the first photos are a bit shocking.

I figured out it was the heel of some horses shoe that had punctured around her eye, but left the eye itself perfectly intact. I called my boss, and called the local vets to come on out, and got the protocols going.

EYES ARE ALWAYS EMERGENCIES.

There’s no ifs, ands or buts, anything about the eye is an emergency. Do not try to treat an eye wound alone, I will forever stand on the “call your vet” hill.

That being said it did take them a bit to come on out to us, and Pokey sat there like a perfect princess until their arrival. We got the day started lesson wise and made adjustments as needed for Pocahontas that day.

The vets made it out and sedated Pokey which wasn’t all that useful as they needed a twitch as well. She clearly wasn’t a happy camper about having her eye played with and stitched up.

In the end they coated her in some antibiotic ointment and gave us a timeline for her working back into the lesson schedule. It ballparked when the stitches would dissolve (they ended up not dissolving, but that’s another story), and how to clean anything in the meantime.

In the end we all learned it’s best to leave this sort of thing to the medical professionals.