Hi, I'm Danvers. I'm the Hoof Health Consultant for SmartPak,
and I'm going to talk with you about abscesses.
An abscess is a profoundly debilitating issue that we see,
especially in wet environments with our horses.
They'll present with such a lameness that you'll think they have a broken leg at times.
It's a very, very painful concern for these horses.
They can be life-threatening. They are, in fact, not a routine issue.
For those of us who live in wet environments, it seems like they're routine,
but they should never be treated as routine.
You need to get your veterinarian and your hoof care specialist involved.
Let them deal with it.
An abscess is, basically, a localized infection. It's a pocket that has become infected,
has walled off. So you have a walled off infection that's creating pressure in the foot.
For it to wall off, it has to gain entry.
So, most often, that's going to be in the white line area of the foot or the lamina.
It can be anywhere from the toe all the way around.
Remember that the lamina doesn't terminate at the heel, it wraps around
and follows the bar, so it can gain access there, as well.
You'll very often see these in the wall, you'll see them in the bar.
You'll also occasionally see abscesses that occur throughout the solar area of the foot.
These are much more suspect, because that usually means that there was some sort of
insult
where a horse has stepped on something and created that point of entry.
So, that could be that he stepped on a nail, a sharp branch, or something,
but if you see one in the sole, there's been something that provided an opportunity
for it to enter into that area. So, you very often have a puncture wound
that is associated with one that you find in the sole.
Those, definitely more suspect.
The idea is to get that open and vented, so that you release the pressure.
If you don't do that, it will tend to track up the wall and finally work its way out
and make its own vent at the hairline. If that happens, then you've got
6 months to a year of working with that as it grows down.
So the idea...the best idea is to get it to vent from the bottom
and get it over with quickly, and not have a maintenance issue
for the next 6 months to a year.
It'll also very often track laterally, and you'll have a sub-solar abscess.
And those are frustrating, because they linger forever.
You'll have a horse that will be lame for three days, then he'll be sound,
then he'll be lame for three days, then he'll be sound.
And this can go on for months as that abscess tracks laterally under the sole
between the new growth and the old exfoliating sole.
So the key to getting this dealt with is to catch it early and get it to vent from the
bottom
not to let it cause the horse pain and track up over three, four days or even a week
before it finally vents on its own. So, you have to be a little bit of a control freak,
make it vent from the bottom. So once that's vented, you have to make sure that
you draw the infection out of it. The traditional approach to this is Epsom salt soaks,
warm Epsom salt soaks, various veterinarians will recommend any number
of products to use for drawing agents, but the important thing
is to make sure that you do get the infection to draw out of it.
Use a drawing salve, a warm soak, whatever.
My personal preference, because I live in the great mid-wet, and I deal with wet feet,
I don't like to soak, because that's part of what got us into trouble in the first place:
the foot was overly hydrated, it was wet. So if I stick it in a bucket of water
three times a day, I'm going to exacerbate the condition.
So, I like to use a drawing salve or a drawing product. I typically will
tape Animalintex into the area and let it draw, that way I don't have to deal with
a warm bucket of water and trying to get a horse to put his foot in it
and stand quietly for 30 minutes at a time. It's simply easy to use.
You tape it in, ignore it, come back, tape it in again.
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Once the infection has drawn out, you still have an issue of the potential for re-infection,
because you've created a pocket that is going to pack with something unproductive.
It's going to pack with fecal matter, urine, dirt, any manner of 'ick'
that's going to get into that and potentially reinfect.
So, you want to pack it with something that is productive.
That can be something as simple as a cotton ball soaked in betadine,
or it can be a commercially available product. Once I'm sure that the infection is out,
I'll take a hoof packing like I would use under a pad. Make sure that you are
packing it with something productuve, otherwise it's going to pack with something unproductive.
I hope you found that helpful. Remember, abscesses are always an issue of concern.
They're never routine. Stay with us here at SmartPak as we work on more hoof care concerns.