Stitching a horse's tongue

Tero, bless his heart, managed to slice a big chunk of his tongue while in his stall (we feel that his next-stall-neighbor might have had something to do with it!).

We attempted, with limited success, to take photos to send to the vet for consultation. He felt that it would be appropriate to attempt to stitch the tongue, with good chances of success since his keeper had noticed the problem right away and the wound was still fresh.

Tongues can be stitched with the horse standing up under mild sedative, but it's quite difficult to encourage them to remain still for the stitching, so the vet chose to "lay him down" and stitch the tongue while the horse was heavily sedated.

We were able to do it in the UPHA arena, and because we had some advance warning, we tried to notify as many students as possible to come watch the proceedings -- we are an educational institution, after all.

Warning! Possible blood and gore to come!

Here's a video of Tero undergoing sedation. Be forewarned that the last few seconds of the video show the injured tongue before cleaning and stitching:

Here's a "before" shot of the top side of the tongue:

Here's a "before" shot of the underside of the tongue:

Here's an "after" of the top of the tongue (we didn't count how many stitches Tero got!):

After, underneath:

Coming soon: a video of Tero waking up and standing.