Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to participate with very much of the work today. I woke up this morning feeling pretty ill. I don’t think it will affect me for too long. I was still able to hang out and see some interesting cases in between swigs of Pepto!

The allograft is trimmed to size and applied prior to being sutured in place.

Wound management is an everyday necessity here. The working animals experience all sorts of friction injuries over the withers, girth, hips, etc. from improperly fitted "tack" and poorly distributed weight loads. A common procedure used to treat the more severe of these injuries is the placement of full-thickness skin allografts. These skin grafts are harvested from a different animal of the same species (usually from the intact skin of an animal that is euthanatized for any reason), and are preserved and refrigerated for later use. The goal is not for the graft to be accepted by the recipient as their own skin, but rather to create a favorable environment for wound healing. The graft is kept moist and maintained for as long as possible, until it dries out and must be removed. I removed one such graft yesterday. While it wasn’t a pretty sight (the smell was awful and maggots were involved–that’s right, maggots), the underlying tissues had granulated in nicely, covering a wound over the withers that had once exposed bone of the thoracic vertebrae. We placed an allograft over an open sore on a donkey’s back today. I’ll get to follow this wound as it progresses, although the graft might not be removed before I leave here, since the allografts are maintained for as long as possible–up to several months in some cases