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It sounds to me like there may be a foreign body (wood splinter) embedded in her leg.  Think of what happens when we get a splinter or thorn in our finger...it's an irritation so the body generates infection, it swells up and gets nasty and pusy, we squeeze it and the thorn pops out, and it then heals.  It sounds like the splinter isn't coming out.  The body will try to "wall off" foreign objects such as this, but if it's getting infected periodically, it may be poking through the barrier the body has created around it and causing the recurring infection.  It could be a very small/slender splinter that didn't show up on x-ray.  Flushing the wound out may help remove it, or your vet might need to dig around a bit to find it.

 

Just some thoughts to consider...

Dawn in East Texas (lots of experience with thorns in my fingers and knees!)

 

On 1/26/07, Lysane Cree <lysanec@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Wondering if anyone has experience with a scar on their horse that seems to get infected every few months...

 

As a two year old my mare came in from the pasture with a cut on the front of her cannon bone. It was quite an ordeal as the vet stitched it, but the wound swelled, some stitches ripped out, ended up making proud flesh, cut that off, finally healed. About a year later, my mare tried to follow another horse through a fence, she got stuck and busted her way through the bottom section. She had lots of fur scraped off but no major wounds except for some wood splinters, some right in her old scar. There was a little bit of infection until a splinter came out. After that it healed nicely. About 4 months later, the scar swelled and I saw a small open hole right on top of the scar. Some blood and pus came out so I cleaned it up and again, it healed nicely and everything looked normal. Another 5-6 months later (this past week) I noticed again that the scar was swelling. A few days after there was a small round hole, a bit of blood and pus coming out and within a few days it was scabbed over and clean looking again. Talk about frustrating!

I had the vet out to look at her this week for this last swelling/infection and he took x-rays in case there was a lesion on the bone, bone chip, or something remaining in her leg. I hated to think that I had been training and competing all summer with something going on with her leg, but the x-rays are clean and don't show anything stuck in there or a problem with her cannon bone.

 

The vet left me with an antibiotic cream and a syringe to irrigate the wound with a saline solution if it happens again, but I'm tempted to put hot compresses to soften the little scab that is there and clean it out anyway and put the antibiotic cream.....even though it is fairly minor and she is never lame, I really don't like to see this recurring infection.

 

Ideas?

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