Equine Emergency First Aid

the horses sense of panic. The worse the situation the calmer you should be.
Identify the problem Try to determine what happened and if the horse is in danger or at risk of further injury.
Assess the situation Assess the horses condition in terms of breathing bleeding or an injury that is preventing the horse from moving.
Take action Get the horse out of danger. Take the horses vital signs stop the bleeding minimize shock administer first aid call for veterinary assistance if necessary.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Most often its the incidents that happen at home that require first aid attention.
Horses get themselves into pickles says Gayle Ecker director Equine Guelph. They can get tears pokes and lamenesses. Domestic situations are where we see a lot of horses get into trouble when they are turned out with others. These are behavioural issues. A horse can get pinned in the corner and get kicked or run away and slip. Often its a first aid situation. The implied thing is that horses are stupid and get hurt but owners might not always appreciate the importance of the pecking order.
Horses live in a hierarchical community with a leader and followers in descending order of rank. The order is rarely changed but if one horse feels crowded or a newcomer is trying to find its place in the band feet and teeth can fly. But what might appear to be a flesh wound could actually be something more complex. On our farm an example of this resulted from introducing a boarding horse to our band of horses. The new horse seemed to settle in well but unfortunately our broodmare Daisy got caught in the middle of a conflict.
We found Daisy standing by the gate with her face covered in blood. Thinking she had torn herself we brought her to the barn to wash her face and found she had a fourcentimetre gash below her left eye. I washed the cut with a saline solution and applied a gel product to promote healing. The cut healed well but when her nose started to dribble a vet check led to the conclusion that she had likely been kicked in the face. She now had a sinus infection as well as a bump between her eyes. Antibiotics didnt fully take care of her dribbly nose and an Xray revealed some dead bone under the bump. She went for surgery to clean out the dead bone and returned home wearing a mask fitted with tubes. For the next ten days the surgical site was flushed with saline administered through the tube by her ears and the fluid drained through her left nostril. It healed well but it all likely began with a pecking order dispute
Trailering horses is done so often and so casually that safety checks are sometimes overlooked. But trailer mishaps will invoke their own emergencies.
Check the flooring the brakes hitch and divider says Dr. Susan Raymond with Equine Guelph. People have to look at their trailers especially if their use is seasonal. But people look at what they are putting into it rather than the trailer itself.
Todd can really relate to that.
I can still remember the shock of dropping the trailer ramp at the show and finding the horses in a heap! she says. My nieces pony had bumped up the central divider and was lying against the dislodged divider at 45 degrees on top of my horse who was sitting like a dog. Our birthday treat for this little girl was a weekend with her pony at our farm and a trip to her first horse show so we were