Lion Attack

Debbie and I were getting ready to put some steaks on the grill Saturday night, when I heard the hated warbling of the Bat Phone.  As it was just after 6 PM, it could only mean that the weekend pasture feeder had found an injured horses.  Sure enough, it was trooper Mike calling to inform me that one of the horses had a badly injured rear leg.  I asked him to bring the horse in to a stall and I'd be there as soon as I could.  

The wound prior to being cleaned.

As Mike is a new trooper, he didn't know which horse was injured.  As we drove to the stables, Debbie called Mike and asked to describe the horse.  Based on his description, we decided it was Cal, a notoriously difficult horse to treat.  

When we arrived at the stables, Mike's wife, Stephanie, was waiting for us.  Mike had been unable to move the horse out of the pasture and was somewhere in the wash that runs the length of our horse pasture.  After about five minutes of searching we found him and, as we suspected, Cal, down in the creek bed.  The wound on his left, rear leg looked bad, but Cal was able to bear weight on it and Debbie walked him out of the ravine.  She put him into a stall to give him some water and bute, while I contacted Arizona Equine in Phoenix to see if they could take Cal.  They said they could, so we loaded him up and began the three-hour journey to the clinic.  There were no local equine vets available and they would not have been able to handle the wound as severe as it was.  We suspected an animal attack as there were recent bear sightings on Fort Huachuca.  

Claw marks.

The trip to Phoenix was uneventful, but we received numerous calls from the military police and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) about the possible bear/lion attack.  I'm not sure how we arrived at the conclusion that it had been a lion attack, but the USDA agent said that bears attack from the front and not the rear where Cal had been wounded.  They searched the pasture with infrared optics, but did not find anything but deer out there.  They did find lion tracks, but they were old.  

When we arrived at the equine clinic, Cal was immediately tended to.  There was another horse there for emergency care with a similar wound (not caused by a lion), so we didn't feel as bad about getting everyone out to work on a Saturday night.  Cal's was heavily sedated so the doctor could clean and examine the wound.  The claw marks and teeth marks were much easier to see and it was clear that a significant amount of tissue was missing from the wound.  Both the tendon and cannon bone were exposed.  

It was determined that Cal wound have to stay at the clinic for continued treatment as there was a risk of infection to the exposed tendon and bone as well as to the soft tissue around the wound.  AZ Equine provides the best care possible in Arizona, so we left Cal in good hands and returned home.  It was 4 AM before we could get to bed, but there was no other course of action we could have taken.  Hopefully, Cal will recover in time and eventually return to work.  

Me trying to hold up Cal's heavily sedated head.