All Creatures
Great and Small...
Equine vets know that injuries are fairly common for
anyone working around horses. Most have suffered
bumps, bruises and stepped-on toes as routine and ‘all
part of a day’s work’. Equine vets also know that they
may expect to sustain between seven and eight work-
related injuries that impede them from practicing,
during a 30-year working life; with bruising, fractures
and lacerations to the leg or the head being the most
common injuries caused by a hind limb kick, a forelimb
chopping out or being crushed by the horse and in a
quarter of these cases hospitalisation is required.
These statistics have been reported by the BEVA’s
Equine Vet survey (July 201 6) and although only equine
vets were surveyed, these statistics and values are
probably very similar for large animal vets. However
one of the injuries not really considered in this equine
survey, are the bite wounds that equine/large animal
vets sustain – and these are not from their large patients
but rather from the many dogs who roam the farms,
plots and stable yards that are visited.
This simple fact was highlighted rather dramatically
a few weeks ago when an experienced horse vet, Dr
Rissa Parker, went on a routine farm call to a yard that
she had attended to many times. She knew the dogs
well - having even seen the one growing from a puppy
into a well -honed protector of the property. When
she opened the gate to drive into the yard, the pack of
dogs rushed and attacked her. Unable to escape, Rissa
was knocked to the ground where the dogs viciously
mauled and seriously injured her. The owner finally
rescued the bleeding and torn vet, who was immedi-
ately admitted for emergency re-constructive surgery
and skin grafts in an attempt to repair the damage
wrought by the aggressive dogs. A random attack
on an equine vet? Unfortunately not, as the article
‘Bite wound infections’ by Green & Goldstein (August
2016) reported that 65% of the major animal related
injuries vets obtain 34% of these will be animal bite
related. It is further noted that the bite wounds al-
though frequently obtained from a patient being treat-
ed; there are often reports that the bites are from the
resident, non –patient dogs on the properties being
visited by the vet. Many different breeds have been
implicated in the attacks (Green & Godstein) with
the following breeds well represented: Chow, Husky,
German Shephard , Rottweiler and Pitbulls.
Living in South Africa on a farm or plot requires mul-
tiple security defences in order to protect one’s self,
the livestock and the large areas. Violence and crime
are reported frequently from the various clients in the
farm areas and often dogs are the first line of defence
used by many owners to deter unwanted visitors as
they are fierce, territorial protectors who take their
guarding jobs seriously. Many a vet has arrived at a
farm call and has had to run the gauntlet of these dogs
rushing the vehicle, biting at the tyres and jumping
against the car windows with frantic barking and di-
• Volume 20 Issue 2 | July 2018 •
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