Last Friday the vet came out to see Scottie and take his stitches out and I am pleased to tell you there has been a huge improvement! When our vet first saw Scottie, he was 9/10s lame – and that was after painkillers from our vet friend to get him in! Over the next couple of days when she saw him to give him more antibiotics, he was 5-6/10s lame. Friday, just 13 days after the injury (and at least 2 days off Bute) he was only 2/10s lame!
However, despite me deciding to take things slow and put Scottie back out in his small pen after the vet removing his stitches, when I returned to the yard I was greeted with a half open wound – typical!
So the next morning I called our vet (out of hours on a Saturday I might add!) and let her know what had happened. She didn’t sound too worried and asked me to send a few photos across. She still didn’t seem too worried but offered to come out and have a look if I would prefer – which I’m glad she did as it was a little bit worse than she had expected.
There was still a small hole in the wound, which she thinks is where the damaged muscle is draining. She thinks there is some liquid and maybe a small amount of damaged tissue slowly working it’s way out which is why it has been dripping a little. She also thinks that this is why part of the wound hasn’t knitted together.
The hole is much smaller than it was, but it sounded like she expected it have gone by now. So he is on another 5 days of antibiotics and he needs the wound cleaned twice a day with antibacterial cream applied to help keep the bugs off. This time he was “barely lame” only 1/10 maybe 2/10s lame, so the vet isn’t worried that it is anything serious.
On Thursday she came out and saw him for hopefully the last time. He trotted up well, with some sound steps and some uneven steps, so less than 1/10 lame. The wound has closed up a lot since she last saw him and seems to nearly stopped draining. Since there is still a bit of a hole she has given him another 5 days antibiotics and thinks that the wound should dry up and scab over in the next week.
There is quite a lot of scar tissue and Scottie is likely to have a slightly pointy stifle after all of this. However, she can’t see any reason why he won’t make a full recovery. But it is now the case of if it doesn’t dry up or if it gets worse when he comes off antibiotics next week, she thinks he will need scanning and xraying to work out why it isn’t healing.
Luckily he doesn’t have to stay on box rest and can go out in his pen every day and start to do a bit more hand walking with him again to get the muscle working. But if it heals okay, once the wound has closed we can start thinking about getting back on!
Last Updated on 14/01/2022
