Wound Drain

Lately we have had a lot of horses get injured. There isn't anything in particular that is causing them to get injured, just bad luck and unusual circumstances. Of four horses that were on the injured reserve list last week I had one with an eye injury, one with wire cuts on his back leg, one with a splint bone fracture, and one with lameness in his front legs. The horse with wire cuts had healed up enough last week to let him go out into the quarantine pasture--a small area where injured horses can recuperate from their wounds. Unfortunately, when I brought him in at the end of the day I noticed a huge rip in his left cheek. A nasty wound for sure but it was also a downward tracking wound which meant it would be hard to flush out and would likely get infected as it wouldn't be able to drain properly. Well, Miss Debbie flushed the wound out and then she called the vet to come have a look at it. There is no way to bandage a face wound that large and sewing it up just traps the drainage in the wound. The vet came out and flushed the wound some more and then decided to sew it up. I questioned her on that since by sewing up the flap it would trap the drainage and cause the wound to get infected. She replied it wouldn't be a problem as she would install a drain. I still wasn't getting it as there was no place to put the drain as the tear in the cheek was completely horizontal. It was sort of like having a shirt pocket on the horse's cheek. Stuff could go in the top but not come out the bottom. I couldn't stay and discuss it with her due to other duties I had but left her with the horse's assigned trooper. I later learned through him she had put a drain in but I didn't really examine what she had done very closely until it came time to remove the drain. It was then I realized that she had poked a hole in the bottom of the "pocket" to insert the drain. It worked perfectly and the wound healed up quickly with no infection. Genius.