Pony vs Tree Update

 Apologies for leaving the blog hanging for almost a month. 2025 has been a year, that's for sure.

When I last checked in, Sophie had run into a tree a few weeks prior and her head was starting to look a lot worse for wear. Luckily, no other 'call the vet!' effects were ever apparent.

Actual pony, actual tree

Yellow pony being the banana she is, simply ran head first into the tree, fell down, then immediately got back up and kept on galloping. She had a scratch on her forehead and an off and on very minor nosebleed for a few days but otherwise was very much herself. (If I had a do over, knowing what I know now, I should have tried to keep her quiet for a few days, but being realistic - quiet is not something this pony would have done well.)

I have so many pictures like this, Sophie is surprisingly unlikely to be actually looking in her direction of travel at any given time

By the time her head was starting to look interestingly shaped and I was starting to worry she'd actually done damage to herself, I unfortunately had just missed the monthly mobile vet visit day. So we were working with pictures and texts until they could get back here in person to do a check up.  

Xrays finally happened this week. Bad news is, she did fracture her skull in two separate places. Good news is that neither one is intruding on anything and both are growing new bone and healing themselves (which is what we figured due to the lack of any other symptoms).

Rough outline of the 'interesting' areas

 It's absolutely wild to me how much of their heads are taken up by sinus cavities and nasal passageways and how well protected everything really important actually is. We got lucky nothing broke through into those (or her orbital bone) because that could have added a lot of complication. 

The long term is that she should be fine, continued non intervention is the way forward, and she could actually come back to work over winter if I was so inclined. 

I've included the xrays, so you can see what a horse with a broken head and two types of fractures looks like.

Right side. This is just me highlighting, and I am obviously not a vet. You can see the fracture that goes straight across her face is already laying bone over top. The 'dent" was harder to get an image of because the nature of it is that it's sitting below the rest of her skull and on most of the images it's in behind other things, but I think I have it outlined here.

From the left side

This is maybe showing the 'dent' a little better, but she moved last minute ;)