Maybe I should tell Axel all about Jeff's new toy, a .44 Magnum. Because it doesn't seem like anything else is preventing him from trying to mame himself daily. I'm going to Colorado for the weekend so I thought I better run out quick last night and clean up Axel's back feet in an attempt to fend off the mud fever a bit. Sort of a pointless task since it rained 5 inches on Tuesday but I'm sure it doesn't hurt to at least try. I half thought maybe I wouldn't clean him up but I saw he was pretty much covered in mud, you couldn't even tell his back feet were supposed to be white. So I tied him to the tree and grabbed the hose and started spraying down his back legs. They actually cleaned up really nice since I had shaved him on Monday. The scabs were soft from standing in the muck all day so most of them came off with just the hose. I sprayed a little mist on the rest of him to cool him off since it was a billion and a half degrees out. His fronts were pretty muddy so I decided I might as well clean them up too even though he doesn't usually get scratches up there. Low and behold one piece of loose hair I can't seem to spray off. Well gee maybe that's because it's a big ole flap of skin that he decided to try and remove himself.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, I'm leaving for the weekend and the barn owners are probably going camping, what better time to hurt yourself! So I sprayed in and around the cut trying to clean it out. There seemed to be something stuck in there but I couldn't tell if it was mud or flesh. I discussed his injury with J and we concluded there wasn't much that could be done about it save for cleaning it out. S took a peek at it as well as A and they both said they'd bring him in over the weekend and hose him off and make sure it wasn't turning gangrenous or anything. Thank goodness for nice boarders! I did email and call the vet to see what he thought but I haven't heard back and I'm running out of time (though A said she could meet the vet there if I couldn't make it). The general consensus on the interweb is that he'll be fine just probably have a nice scar. It seems like mostly skin and probably didn't even bleed much.
So I scrubbed Axel's back feet with the Norwex cloth, picked more scabs, and scrubbed him with the Chlorhexidine (I really should get some stock in this stuff). The good news so far is that the mud fever doesn't look too bad on the back legs and I think maybe the swelling is starting to go down (I suppose standing in cold water/mud helps that a bit). He's also walking pretty okay and if it would ever get to a temperature where he's not out there sweating from just standing still I might get to see him move more. I put some chlorhexidine in the wound on his front foot and tried to scrub a bit, he wasn't too pleased with me scrubbing though. I also tried to put some Tri-Care on the wound but I doubt that did any good. Without jamming my finger in there I was only able to really get the edges.
And I just got a call back from the vet that said we're doing all the right things, can't stitch it at this point so just keep it clean and call back if it gets nasty.
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