July: Nostril Laceration

July Case of the Month: Nostril Laceration

“Pepper” is a young mare in training, and her owner does a variety of work with her, including round pen work. After a training session last month, while Pepper was briefly unattended, she got her nose caught on the bridle hook hanging on the side of the round pen, panicked and pulled back. In her efforts to escape the nose trap, Pepper managed to lacerate a significant portion of her right nostril, leaving a large flap of tissue and a fair amount of blood. Her owner called us right away, and once we arrived on farm we set to work reattaching Pepper’s nostril. Nostrils can be very tricky to suture, as the skin and mucosa inside the nostril need to be sutured as well as the skin visible on the outside of the nostril; making for tight quarters to work in with the needle drivers. The other tricky aspects of successfully repairing a wound like Pepper’s are that 1. the end of the flap often has limited functional blood supply, making it likely that the tissue would die off during the healing process, and 2. Their noses get very itchy while the sutures are in place and they rub them, often reopening the wound by tearing out sutures. Unfortunately for Pepper, both complications occurred with her, despite her owner doing everything right and keeping a grazing muzzle on her to protect her nose. The photos of the second repair, 11 days after the first, are shown below, as well as follow up photos of Pepper’s nose after her sutures were completely removed this month.

The important thing to try to learn from poor Pepper’s case is that while horses can hurt themselves on anything, hooks at face level are particularly dangerous as horses can hook nostrils and eyelids/eyes, and cause a fair bit of damage during their panic. It is worth taking a look around your farm and trying to remove potential offenders before your horse finds them in a dramatic way!