This post is going to be a hard one but I think it’s important to share as Leena had an injury that no vet in my area and outward had seen before and I feel it may be one to share in case you have to deal with anything similar.
Please note I am not a vet but I worked closely with my vets in this situation . I am in no way giving any medical advice I am simply sharing what happened to my horse and what I used to help her. Please if your horse becomes injured call you vet immediately!
November 28th 2021
I went to the barn after being away for 3 weeks on a work trip. I was so excited to ride as Leena and I had moved to a bigger and new barn! Lots of space for turnout and nice paddocks, as well as a big arena for riding and working! So I pulled Leena from the field and took her to the arena. As I pulled off her blanket I noticed that her tail seemed to stick to the tail strap. As I pulled her tail off the strap and pulled the blanket off her body I was horrified with what I found.
This was was I saw when I lifted her tail. Now I have a few vet shows before and so I had a guess of what I was looking at.
To me it looked like a prolapse. Right away I called the vet. What felt like hours passed and after calling 4 different vets I was at a loss and I felt hopeless. Nobody was able to come out and it would be 3 days before she could be seen. Problem with that was obviously this was super infected and painful but I also didn’t know how long she had been like this. I didn’t know if it could get frost bite since it was about -20•c at the time.
I found a vet that lived farther away but they were available immediately. Again what felt like hours and the vet showed up. He examined Leena and was shocked and puzzled. He had never seen anything like it especially in a mare that wasn’t pregnant.
“Uterine prolapse is a disorder in which the uterus turns inside out and protrudes out of the vagina. It is rare in horses, but may occur immediately after or within a few hours of delivery of a foal.”
Now in the above photo you can see that it has been cleaned up. Leena was sedated. Best news was there was no infection.
The vet explained that he believed Leena had been kicked ( you can see the kick mark in the photo) and the kick may have made contact with her vagina, causing it to form a hematoma. Which then came out when she was in heat and winking at all the boys. However she was unable to get the large lump back inside. She had attempted to itch it which then caused it to tear. ( the vet described it like a woman ripping her clit) 😳 like ouch!
There was no treatment. We were left with a waiting game. Surgery was not an option as no vets locally did that type of surgery, pushing it back inside and stitching her could cause infection, and taking it off wasn’t something my vet was willing to risk due to all the nerves to the area.
So began the healing process. Clean it daily, and wrap it. Well let’s just say wrapping it was not going to happen. She was so sore and it was such a bad area there was no way to wrap it. The idea then from the vet came that we were going to leave it, hope it dried up and fell off.
Warm water and gently wash the area, and diaper rash cream. That was my treatment, no antibiotics, I gave her bute to help her with pain.
We were a month into it and nothing seemed to change until just after Christmas, it seemed to finally be changing. The skin around it was healing and it sunk back in not looking so angry.
At this point the vet and I agreed to stop daily cleaning and let things fix themselves the skin was no longer raw. We were past the infection stage which was a giant relief as I was worried I was gonna lose her. How it looks now compared to how it looked when I found her that day is a major difference.
She may never have it looking normal again but this was it last week! Pink and healthy. I have decided to try to calm her heats down although we never had the issue before she is around a lot more horses then she was before. She is with mares and geldings and goes into these raging heats. I do not want to have this be a repeat!
I’ve decided to try her on Chasteberry. It’s around $32.00 CAD from the feed store and put out by MadBarn. There are a few companies that have it but MadBarn has some really nice stuff. I will link it below and also do a post about them and the products here in the near future!
Chasteberry is purported to work for horses in a similar way as for women. According to equine herbalists, it works by raising progesterone levels which helps to relieve symptoms of PMS as well as other menstrual cycle abnormalities.
Leena is doing much better now and seems to be back to her normal self. There are many things that I have learnt from this experience, I must say that I am glad that I spent so much time building trust with Leena so that she knows I wouldn’t hurt her intentionally. It made it less dangerous for me and easier for her knowing that I had taken the time to make sure that I touched her everywhere and desensitized her to that area.
- Start touching your horse everywhere and get them prepared for a situation that may occur where you need to be able to work with them.
- Have a relationship with more then one vet! You never know when an emergency may happen and you need to have someone to help! Your vet may be busy!
- Keep a record of the injury and how you are dealing with it. Keep photos and a log invade you need to share with another vet or other equine people. This also allows you to see if there are any changes on a day to day basis.
If you have any questions about this feel free to comment! I tried to keep this as short as I could but it was a lot to make sure I wrote out so I may have forgot something!
Check out MadBarn products and watch for a later date post about their products! https://madbarn.com
In the Life of Leena 