# Swelling or loose skin?



## stardancer (Aug 12, 2010)

Beth Harding's Photos | Facebook

here is a photo


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## trailqueen (Sep 14, 2010)

That looks like swelling. An infection will pull down to a low point ie. lower flanks or between the front legs. Usually it will only happen if it is a fairly significant infection. The injury will usually be higher than were the swelling appears. My mare got an injury on her upper hip and had large pockets of swelling like I see in your picture between her front legs, flanks and under her belly. Her white count was 70,000 the vet said it should normally be around 6,000. With antibiotics and lasics (not sure of spelling)we were riding her in a few months. I would check her over for an injury and call a vet for blood work.


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## stardancer (Aug 12, 2010)

Ok thank you i'll look into that now


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## trailqueen (Sep 14, 2010)

I just reread my thread that should read white count of *30,000* not 70,000. Don't know how that happened.


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## tealamutt (Aug 21, 2009)

Agree that it is edema (swelling). The problem is, it can be caused by LOTS of things, but as the other poster mentioned, gravity makes it collect in low points so location isn't always helpful with figuring out what causes it. How is her health otherwise? Heart rate, resp. rate, temp? Gums look good? Eating well, etc?


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## stardancer (Aug 12, 2010)

to be quite honest i couldn't tell you there are a lot of problems with ownership and problems to detailed and strange to go into but she is 3 or 4 and has been quite underweight for sometime, she's in a large clear field with 3 others and they are all friendly but anything could have happened to her. Also her mum died at around 7 from a very rare disease after having her, there was no name put to it just that her muscles pretty much disintegrated. 

She is pretty much untouchable and when we handled her last and attempted to start the breaking progress she dropped her weight from stress and we were worried it could trigger the disease so we turned her back out again.

It's all a lot to take in really and i was just hoping i could find a simple answer to his without getting any vets involved.


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## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

It could be so many things that a vet really should get involved. It may be something so simple as she got kicked by another horse or something much, much worse. It would be almost impossible for us to tell from a picture.


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