Punctures

STEVE: A puncture is obviously a penetrating wound that can go into any part of the muscle, body, and/or hoof. The bigger problem you have with punctures in the horse is the fact that they have a fair amount of clostridium tetani, which is an anaerobic bacteria. The problem you have is that, we usually routinely vaccinate horses for clostridium tetanus or tetanus vaccines. If you don’t, you can find out very shortly a puncture wound can become devastating.

ALEX: Really bad.

STEVE: Most horses that get tetanus usually succumb to it, it’s a fatal problem. I have seen the odd horse that basically was treated with high doses of penicillin and they survived it, but it is not good. So if you get a puncture wound, especially a deep puncture wound, it is paramount they get looked at right away, and you know the status of your horse’s tetanus inoculation immediately.

ALEX: The other part of it is with the environment is that the horse is living in, a stall or even out in the paddock; nail heads that are sticking out or any kind of objects that they can run into can cause a puncture wound very easily. Especially with objects in the stall, I’ve seen nails go into horse’s frogs and that is not pretty. So again, it goes back to stable management, keep your horse clean, check your stall walls, your paddock boards, make sure everything is in place so you don’t get a puncture wound.