Gotta Love Paints

As most of you know, my riding companion is Chief, and he is a registered Paint.  Paints are known for their even temper, nice demeanor, and they are of course beautiful so I've always loved paints.  But, after owning a paint there are two key things I will look for in my next paint so save myself some headache.  Firstly, my next paint will not have a white nose, and the secondly, he will have dark eyes and dark skin around the eye.  Now this isn't to say that all paints with pink skin on their eyes and nose are a bad thing, but that I personally, will try to avoid these traits in my next purchase and here is why.

First, if your horse has a pink nose, he is subject to sunburn during the summer.  Now, there is an easy solution to this if you horse will wear one of these super cool fly masks:  Fly Mask with Long Nose.  However, if your horse is anything like mine and lives in a pasture with other playful horses that pull it off his face, it gets interesting try to keep it on. I also use Coppertone Sport in 70 SPF and that works pretty well.  And per my post from Nov. 18 if they do get sunburnt put Desitin on it.

Second, if your horse has pink skin around his eyes, you need to be really careful again with the sun.  This summer Chief got a cancerous spot on the skin around his eye.  It was small but noticeable and as it continued to grow, I called the vet to have him take a look at it.  Sure enough, it was cancerous and needed to be removed.  Had Chief been able to wear his fly mask, the Cashel ones are also UV protectant, he probably wouldn't have had this issue.  But since I couldn't keep the fly mask on, this happened.  Once I noticed it, I started taking pictures of it so I could tell if it was growing.  I've noticed if you look at something too often, it seems like its not changing but it is...
July 22

Notice the small bump in the pink skin right next to the eye.  By July 26 the bump had gotten more defined.

The bump seems to be getting larger on Aug. 6.

This is when the vet got called.  Shortly thereafter the vet removed the bump kind of like you would with a wart, they freeze it off.  Kind of cool actually.  No real after care instructions other than some ointment for the eye.  This is what it looked like shortly after the "surgery."

You can still kind of see a bump and at this point I was a little worried, but as it continued to heal, it continued to disappear.  And this is what it looks like as of October.

This picture is blurry but its hard to get a horse to stand still so you can take a picture of his eye... just so you know.  The skin looks a little irritated still but the bump is gone and that was the important part.  Honestly, that skin typically looks a little red, its just one of those things with Chief.  As the time goes on, it continues to look better and better.

The important thing to note here folks is if you have a horse with pink skin, please be sure to keep an eye (no pun intended) on those areas to make sure they don't get burnt or get little bumps that could be cancerous.  If you notice something out of the ordinary, contact your vet.  This cancerous bump could have grown into the actual eye and then it becomes a real problem.  So if you can catch things like this early, its not a big deal.  If you can stall your pink skinned horse during the summer that is another great way to keep him out of the sun.  But God love my low rent horse he hates the stall so we use the fly mask.  If we can keep it on him, it does its job.

This summer I'm enlisting my Mother-in-Law to help me design a fly mask that fits over the halter thereby hopefully making it impossible for the other horses to pull it off his face.  I'll let you know when we get that designed and if it works.  If it does, maybe I can sell the design to Cashel and go into early retirement  : ).

Happy Trails folks!