Sunday, March 08, 2009

Trying to decide

I went out to the barn this afternoon and walked Kaswyn around the arena. Well, I got on him bareback and walked him because he's such a pain in the butt to hand walk. After the walking I unwrapped his foot. I think the flap of skin might actually stick down and not leave a gaping hole in his heel. There is still an open wound, but it's more like a slash instead of a hole. It was awfully wet and soft, and the heel around it has started to soften up as well. It didn't look like it was infected, which is probably because I started him on oral doxycycline Friday afternoon as a precaution. It did kind of have a funky smell to it though, and Kaswyn kept sniffing it which made it hard to work on it. I put more Nolvasan on it and wrapped it again, but now I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do.

I'm torn. Should I unwrap it tomorrow, spray it with Aluspray, and let it dry out? Or should I keep it wrapped to keep it clean? What do you all think? I'm leaning towards unwrapping it....

Five days until show time!

3 comments:

Leah said...

I vote for leaving it unwrapped but with plans to check on it 8-12 hours later. Then if there is any edema return to wrapping.

Or, (I change my vote for this) wrap for another day but with wound powder on it to dry it out, then leave it unwrapped.

Dressage Mom said...

Leah,

Yeah, I was thinking about putting some kind of wound powder on it and then wrapping it again. The only wound powder I have is caustic powder, and I don't want to use that. I'm not really worried about edema - I was just wrapping it to keep it clean and to try to stick the skin flap back down. But my gut is telling me I need to start drying the thing out. The Aluspray is basically an aerosol powder, so I guess I could use that. If the show weren't this weekend I wouldn't be stressing about this!

Unknown said...

I vote for Aluspray and leaving it unwrapped to dry out.
We spray twice a day if necessary and unless his bedding is really dirty or there are hundreds of flies around I reckon there is no better healer than fresh air.

 
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