Hurricane Rita Leads to Severed Extensor Tendons

My new calf roping horse was doing great. We had really started to click, competing at local jackpot ropings and such. I had put my rodeoing on hold while I got my degree from Texas A&M University. My new horse,"Sonny", by a son of "Sonny Dee Bar", was carrying me back into the roping pen after several years away.

Then in late September we were learning that a large hurricane was threatening the Texas gulf coast. As the days went by we all became increasingly, alert as most reports had Houston directly in Rita's path. After a day of deliberation and scrambling we found and decided on a boarding facility in Bryan, TX to relocate Sonny to for safety's sake. Better safe then sorry, right?

I made the hour and a half trip to my ol' college stomping grounds to leave my roping buddy in good hands safely out of harms way. Upon arrival, I did the typical checking of the stall for foreign objects, check for water and inquired about feeding schedules, etc. I left my contact information with the young barn hand. I had spoken with the owner of the facility over the phone and he had offered me his last stall for that weekend. So, all looked fine and I started to feel real good about the decision to evacuate Sonny from the potentially deadly path of hurricane Rita.

Wednesday, I headed north to Whitesboro, TX with my wife to stay with my parents as the hurricane continued on its current coarse toward Galveston. We had spent that first night with my family as we watched the News from the Coast. Its was later in the second day that I got a call from my Vet that a boarding facility had contacted them. Apparently, my cell was out of reach. I eventually got a voice mail from a veterinarian from Bryan. I learned that my horse had had an accident but that he was doing fine and not to worry. He had kicked through a fence and had wounds on both rear legs. But, the veterinarian assured us that the joints should be fine and that infection was not a concern.

That next morning we were relieved to see that we might be able to get back home safely and pick up Sonny. Believing that all was fine and that Sonny was well taken care of, I ventured back to Bryan to bring home my horse. I had arranged to meet the veterinarian whom first tended to Sonny. When I arrived I was surprised to see such a large area of yellow looking skin on the front of both hocks. The left leg was obviously worse off, with the wound lower, more squarely on the front of the hock. Click to see the left leg after four days.

I learned that he had cuts and scrapes all over from the top of his hip up as far as his elbows and girth area. They had found him the next morning still stuck in the fence. It was obvious that he had struggled for quite some time. The boarding facility's veterinarian now told that he was walking better now and that the she felt alot better now. ( How bad much worse had it been? Why was I not told? )

The stall had an adjoining fenced area where the trauma had occurred. The fence was a pipe and cable style fence that you find at many horse farms and facilities nowadays. The section had been repaired before I arrived.( the cables had to be cut to free Sonny from the fence) I can only guess what that scene must have looked like. I learned that a horse was turned out in an alley that runs along the length of the barn just on the other side of the fence that Sonny was found trapped in. One could only assume that sonny had kicked at this horse through the fence. Now, Sonny has never kicked at another horse. He was just fine that first day when I left him. It was not until the other horse was turned out the next day allowing it to run up and down the alley that the accident occurred, implying that these two horses had an altercation across the fence.

Back home over the next couple of days as I watched closely, the skin over the front of both hocks began to die and fall off. What was exposed was a severely damaged tendon. As my veterinarian explained, the two tendons that run down the front of the hock are called Extensor Tendons. Well, both tendons now have an approx 5 inch gap between top and bottom sections. With no way to repair the damage, we try to avoid infection and pray that God will heal him.

More to come later in part two. "The Healing Process".