The article Bandaging Horses talked about the materials and basic principles of bandaging horses. This article will build upon these techniques and introduce new materials to help speed healing and increase comfort. In this article you will find discussions on pressure wraps, poulticing, sweating, and liniments. Also the use of hot and cold wraps and hydrotherapy in disease processes will be discussed.

It is important to help reduce inflammatory swelling in the legs of horses. Relatively poor circulation can make swelling in the legs a self perpetuating problem. The result is the acute swelling can become a chronic problem or even worsen to the point of increasing the damage to the skin. Another complication is that the swelling can result in scar formation and actually create a permanent lameness due to adhesions forming between tissues. Trauma to the hock and flexor tendon are common locations for this type lameness.

Another type of swelling in the lower legs is passive edema. Here inflammation is not the cause. It appears these are horses that have lost some of the elasticity in the skin and so there is a tendency for these tissues to fill with fluid, particularly when stalled. We call this type swelling stocking up.

The first steps that should be taken need to be treatment directed at the primary disease process. Also if the swelling involves inflammation, NSAIDs should be used to help control swelling and pain. In some instances, where infection is not the cause of the inflammation even stronger anti-inflammatory treatment like corticosteroids are effective treatment. For more on this see the particular disease process involved.