Hose as much as you can , I have taken care of a couple leg injuries for owners, but I always heard if on a joint or below the knee have a vet out. How did she injure it? swelling at knee is a concern. My daughters Tb , had a swelling, that no one; including trainer ,thought was serious, till it didn't go away and got gradually bigger, turned out to be a synovial tear, had to have drained 2x, adequan ,shots and now he has a huge knee permanently that everyone gasped at when they see it. He is on oral suppliments to help keep the fluid right, will eventually have arthritis there. But he has never been lame on it or any heat. If you can afford it I'd have the vet, legs are so tricky to diagnose. ----- Original Message ----- From: Val Nicoson Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 6:47 AM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [RC] Leg Wound Help Yet another learning experience for my mare and I want to be sure to do the right thing for her. She has a nice horizontal cut (gash) just below her left front knee but the stable says it doesn't need stitching (marginal IMHO). She also has some scrapes around her fetlock and pastern areas. All these wounds are on the front of her leg. She is swollen a ways up from her knee and all the way down to her fetlock, perhaps some minute swelling in her pastern but hard to tell. The swelled area does have heat and there is definitely fluid about the knee region. This all happened on Wednesday but due to the weather the stable manager didn't call me...and didn't call me yesterday either. I discovered it when I went out last night to visit her. There was a note from the manager on the stall door...she had washed it off and put some ointment on the wound. Another boarder suggested 3 grams of Bute which we did give her (she needed something). Did hose her down for 15 minutes which reduced the swelling nicely and then put some yellow ointment on it. She does get some MSM in her morning grain ration so did double that to help with the joint swelling. OK...here are my questions... 1. What else can I use besides Bute? Banamine I can get but it is expensive. Anything else out there that would help and for how long should these meds be used? 2. Ice or Heat? Did hose her leg down with very cold water. When does one use both...20 min of ice and then 20 min of heat? Can only get to the barn once a day... so it that OK...is once a day OK or should it be done twice a day? 3. Should the wound be wrapped or left open? If wrapped should there be ointment/gauze under that? 4. Should she be turned out at all for 1-2 hours or kept in the stall? If stall kept, would handwalking help or not? I will be calling a vet today to obtain some meds and perhaps he might order some penicillin or other stuff. Thanks for your help...this is my first at dealing with such an injury, Val + Sania
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