Wow...talk about a blow out!

I have dealt with a few abscesses here and there, but not had to worry about them too much. Most the time, by the time I see the client's horse, the abscess has already been found and treated by a vet (which I prefer anyway and almost always send the client to the vet if they call me first, as I am really not compfy with digging away at a horse's sensitive tissues...). So I often just get the "cleanup" job afterward, helping the client with the hoof as the cavity the abscess left grows out. This is actually more fun anyway, as I get to see quite a lot of interesting things going on in the sole...
Here is a hoof I worked on this past week. It belongs to an older QH that went dead lame on New Years (the client was OH so happy to have to pay THAT call out fee, esp as he is a ways out in the countryside) and the vet determined it was an abscess. They found and dug out a small drain channel right at the tip of the toe (the hole was maybe the size of the tip of my finger) and the horse was happy and sound again after a few days of soaking. Enter me, about 6wks later... I trimmed up the hoof, looked at the "hole", felt a LOT of "hollow" (meaning you really do feel the top layer of sole "give" under your fingers and can tell there is an air pocket between layers of sole there) sole all around the edge of the hoof. I could also tell that there was mud and gunk up under there (when you pressed on the hollow parts, mud would flow out the drain area..uck) and figured it would be good to take out the dead sole and get some air up on the new sole growing in. Otherwise, in our climate, you are just asking for thrush to set in under there and cause some major problems down the line. In the following pictures, you can see what I found under the sole...I would cut a tiny little bit, feel around, find more hollow, cut some more, etc... it just wouldn't STOP! by the time I got done, you could see the abscess had sat under the entire hoof, all along the rim. OUCH..no wonder the horse went dead lame (guess he said it had been going lamer for a week, but since this horse has arthritis and stifle issues, the "ouchy" lameness was not seen as unusual, til it was obviously not bearing weight on the foot...he's a new horse owner who just didn't know, so I can't really fault him. He felt REALLY bad about it all). So I cleaned it up as well as I could (you can see there is already some black goop starting and I told him to clean and betadine the hoof for a while til everything clears up nicely) and we'll keep an eye on it over the next trims. I think more sole will be coming off though, as I felt some spots that were on the border between good and bad sole... Fun stuff...ugggg :)






From the front...

















From the side.....
















Closeup..... it not only spread far, but fairly deep too...