Inevitable!

It's inevitable that when you leave your horse for a long-weekend away (Happy Belated Canada Day!) your horse will invariably injure themselves in some way or another.  During our 12 hour drive back north from Calgary, SO received a text on his phone (mine is currently MIA) from our BO stating that when I did check that night to check over Koda's face since he had a small cut under his right eye.  When I got there, I checked it and seemed ok, no swelling, a little heat, nothing major.  So I quickly cleaned it out, applied a dash of swat and put him out with his flymask.

Did night check again tonight, and it was much worse.  One third of his head was minorly swollen, and it was hot to the touch.  Luckily for me, my superman SO came with me tonight so while I was doctoring Koda, he took care of all the night chores.  To treat it I had to make do with what I had on hand.  First off, I soaked the swollen area including the cut to help bring the swelling down along with open the cut for cleaning and disinfecting.  Once the swelling had gone down enough and the cut had reopened, I cleaned out all the crud that was in there.  Had to use the tweezers to get some of the bigger hay bits out.  I was extremely impressed with Koda, when I was soaking his face he was a little twitchy, but when the tweezers and major poking around was going on, he was as still as a stone.  After the cleaning out, I applied triple antibiotic ointment, slathered on some swat, and on went the flymask again. 

Tomorrow I think I will try doing a peroxide wash with a q-tip, water rinse, wonder dust, and swat.  I'm hoping that the swelling comes down soon, although Koda doesn't seem the worse for wear.  Once the swelling and tenderness is gone, we'll be back on our training regime in time to make it to our first HT.

Anyone have other options or ideas to treat a cut under the eye?