Today I went out to get my stallion Saber from his padock as I
was going to pony him from my gelding Jay on a training ride. As I went to
halter him I noticed he had a fairly significant (at least to me) gouge/puncture
wound right at his windpipe/jaw. He is fine, a nasty wound, but it will
heal fine and he's eating happily and doing fine.
What really scared me about the injury is that he could have
easily puntured his main artery and instead of having the wound that he has, he
could just have bled to death. I looked around the paddock carefully
to find what it was that he could have done this on. I
was expecting to find some sharp object, some protruding something but what I
found would have never occured to me as dangerous. Apparently he
positioned his head through the gate panels (which by the way are quite
close together, not sure how he did this) and when he went to pull his head out
he caught his jaw on the hook like piece that holds the chain on the gate.
I never imagined that the (metal) gates could be dangerous in this way.
Most of the farm gates that are sold around here, come with a this chain/hook
combination standard. In fact all of our farm gates have this type of
closure.
Needless to say my husband spent the day sawing off these
hooks from the gate frames and replacing them with an alternative
closure.
Just wanted to share my experience so that other's perhaps can
avoid this injury.
Dawna