Its not hard to imagine, there’s plenty of it out there for us to each have experienced, as long as we’re paying attention.
Does the horse have a history of being naughty with the farrier? My girl does, and I take time off work to hold her every time the farrier is out. Sorry, but the onus is on the horse owner to make arrangements for holding. But someone who witnessed this event should have let HO know what happened so owner could decide about putting in a vet call.
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Just an update:
Now the vet bills are finalized, the farrier has agreed to pay half. Owner decided to forgo surgery and accept a “pasture sound” horse - she didn’t really have much time to ride lately anyway between school and work, and the cost of surgery wasn’t something that was reasonable for her. Horse is healing reasonably well, but there is considerable scar tissue, and the tendon did not reattach.
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Glad to hear that the owner was able to come to an agreement with the farrier. This was a sucky situation all the way around.
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Thank you for the update. I’m sorry that the prognosis for the horse isn’t better. It’s good that the farrier came through with some compensation, but geez, it never should have happened in the first place.
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Farrier sounds like a reasonable person, despite all the bashing that went on.
Horses are difficult creatures to keep alive and sound. Sometimes something looks minor and isn’t, sometimes something looks major and isn’t. The characterizations of wounds can change - a wound where the skin looks to be attached may not be, and that’s kind of what this sounds like. Perhaps the skin was still attached, it looked like it was just bleeding a bit from a scrape, it got wrapped, the skin wasn’t actually attached and pulled off and no one noticed when it got unwrapped.
I don’t know why we all reach for the sue-button when something happens to these critters. If I sued myself for every time I’d made the wrong judgement call (40 years with horses and it still happens) I’d either be very rich or very poor depending on the way you looked at it. I’ve had Trainers, Vets, and Farriers all be wrong about health situations in varying ways. I do think that is a big part of what’s wrong with this industry. This adversarial relationship that we set up instead of realizing that everyone is just trying to do their darned best with the information that they have at the time.
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Life experience is a big piece of this too. Someone who got burned by the “wait and see” thought process is more likely to go guns-blazing at a problem, and vice versa.
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Oh for sure. And individual temperament. And philosophy of equine training and care. And definitions of “bad”. I’ve a degloving injury occur that forever altered my definition of “bad cut”. No two people will treat an equine or an equine injury the same way.
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There’s a boarder at my barn that flipped her lid over a 1" long strip of missing hair on her horse. No blood, no nothing, just hair missing - she lost.her.mind.
Meanwhile, mine come in actively bleeding on the regular - I just sigh, rinse it out, and spray some alucote on it and throw them back out in the field.
IMO - she just hasn’t had a horse actually get hurt bad enough yet. Like you said, it forever alters your perception.
My SO always is on my case “why don’t you call the vet?” for things like abscesses, low grade limping, cuts and scrapes, mild colic-type (which gets a phone call but not always a visit). He’s got dogs, and I’ve tried to explain to him that some self-care is expected in the equine world. The vets don’t want calls for every little thing. He doesn’t get it yet. 
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Okay, I got no dog in this particular fight, but I just want to point out that the wound in question in this thread was not a strip of hair that was missing. That the horse will never be anything more than pasture sound in the future because of this injury.
Just saying.
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We had changed topic to “how people react to wounds on horses”. It has no bearing on the OP.
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Agree with this. From what I gather, the wound wasn’t just a “skin tear” or minor laceration - it was a deep cut and the tendon was actually partially severed? (correct me if I’m wrong)
With a little probing (and rinsing of the wound), I think it would have been evident (to any experienced horse person; we assume the farrier was one, if not the “onlookers”) that it was serious enough to require a vet’s attention ASAP.
It seems that the farrier was in a rush, so didn’t look carefully at the wound (or clean it?) and simply wrapped it and turned the horse out. The “onlookers” were inexperienced horse people, or they would have wanted to examine the wound more carefully to determine its severity.
Since the farrier offered to share the vet bills, it would appear that he believes that he had some “culpability” here - and the fact that the horse is now no longer rideable as a result of the injury?? Hard to say whether immediate vet intervention would have prevented this, but it MIGHT have; obviously we will never know.
I agree with those who say the HO should have taken it more seriously (so shares the blame), but the “onlookers” should have at the least taken pictures!, and the vet should have been called - seems like a no brainer.
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I agree. I’m very sad for the owner and the horse. The costs of this incident obviously have ramifications far beyond the immediate vet bills. Even if the owner doesn’t have time to ride now, that may change in the future. And there is obviously the horse’s resale/lease value, and just the mental state of a horse that can’t be worked. It’s always better to have a rideable horse, even if the owner is no longer riding.
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That is correct, however, my point was that the wound might not have looked that bad on first glance. I have seen, particularly with degloving injuries, the skin appear to be adhered, but it really wasn’t. It’s also possible that the wrap, left on too long, ended up causing a degloving injury.
It’s also not clear that the farrier felt responsible for it and that’s why he paid for it. People do all sorts of things to keep the peace. He may have felt very badly that he didn’t call the owner directly but instead relied on the wisdom of the BO & Mom. That’s different than feeling actually responsible for wrongdoing.
Anyway, I’m sorry for the owner of the horse. It’s worthwhile to remember that these creatures are so darned fragile that they break legs just galloping across the pasture, and anything we do with them can result in injury and/or death of both them and you.
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