Thar She Blows.

Last night it was clear Armani's abscess had finally blown a hole and drained. Yipeee! Oh, the things that get us excited. It was a small hole, about 3-4mm but the size of the lump was greatly reduced. I cleaned it up and did another compress. He was much more comfortable and I was even able to press on it in a few places before getting the ugly horse face. Good (if somewhat cranky) pony!

I contacted my vet just to make sure my ideas of how to proceed from here were correct and to see if she had any other recommendations. I pretty much had everything covered - keep the hot compresses going and the site open as much as possible (not by force, obviously, but by cleaning it out) to allow for full drainage. I was prepared to have her out again but she was more than confident I would do the best job and said that natural openings in abscesses stay open better than incisions anyway. She reassured me that scar-tissue was unlikely with the level of care he was getting but that it would take quite awhile to disappear all-together, so not to be overly concerned about that.

The one addition was that she suggested making a warm "weak tea" betadine solution and flushing the area. She knows my horse well enough now to add, "Armani might try to kill you there's a chance Armani won't be happy with this." Don't get me wrong, he's not a bad horse, he's just not very confident and he was a start-and-sell kind of horse so I'm the first person to actually work on manners. Incidentally, that's one of his new barn names - Manners. Armani - Mani - Manners...because he needs some!

I've flushed wounds/abscesses a numbers of times on dogs (during my undergrad, I dog-sat for a prof whose dog developed abscesses on her neck sometimes, plus a few other random incidents), I have never had to do it to a horse. Dogs tend to be stoic and rip through your heart with their sad eyes while you do something to help them. Horses just want to get the eff away from you, especially nervous ones like mine.

I enlisted the help of a friend - who thought it looked oh so easy, why wasn't I getting it right in there - until she tried it and, before even attempting a squirt, laughed and said "yeah, it really isn't as easy as it looks!" I did get several good squirts on the general area and since it's much more open tonight, I can only hope that some of the solution went into the deeper parts so it heals from the inside out. The one time I actually had the tip of the flushing syringe right in the opening, I'm not sure if I was actively pressing the plunger, or if that was a nano-second later but the area got thoroughly spritzed, as did we.  Time of year is on my side in the sense that there are no bugs to spreadinfection and it's so bloody cold I wouldn't be surprised if all the bacteria was frozen to death. Not kidding, it is -22C/-11.2F tonight without the wind. Wind chill is -33C/-27.4F ...we are reaching the point where Celcius and Fahrenheit aren't so different! (equal at -40).

I am devising a new outsmart Armani disinfection plan for tomorrow...stay tuned for "as the abscess turned"...

blech.