Horses Be Horses, But It Still Sucks When It's Yours

I went out to the barn yesterday, excited for our first jump lesson since before Christmas.  When I pulled Dee out of the field all the excitement vanished.  Her eye was swollen, hot and leaking.  I might have had a few moments of panic because of what had just happened to a horse my mom knew.

This is the most she would open her eye yesterday

One of the horses at my mom's barn scratched his cornea on Jan 1.  The owner treated it for a few days and then waited a few more days before taking him to the vet.  When they did make it to the vet he was completely blind and the eye was so damaged that the only option were to remove the eye or put him down.  As he already had balance issues, which would have been severely compounded by the loss of his eye, they opted to put him down on Jan 9.

I know that eyes are not something to mess with.  So I called my vet as soon as I took a deep breath and stopped the runaway my-horse-is-going-to-die-and-leave-me-with-crippling-vet-bills-and-no-best-pony thought train.  He recommended flushing it with saline and putting in medicated eye drops (the kind you can get for people) for a day or two.  If her eye isn't looking better by Friday then I will take her in. Of course, the only thing I don't have in my (extensive) first aid kit is eye drops.  I do have salt so I can mix up a mild saline solution though.

Best Pony may have to be renamed Sainted Pony.  She was incredibly tolerant of me rinsing her eye.  After I'd rinsed it as best as I could I then hot-packed it for 20 minutes.  I think she actually enjoyed that part. Luckily the barn owner had some eye drops that she gave me so I was able to treat it.

I drove out this morning to do the whole thing again and it was marginally better. The swelling has come down some and it wasn't running anymore.  Once again she was completely compliant and didn't' even try and avoid me.  Fingers crossed that it is looking better tonight.

It may look like the middle of the night but it was almost 8am, I'm so sick of winter.