A few thoughts here, feel free to post any ideas or questions for discussion:

The cleaner and more recent a wound is, the more likely it is to hold stitches and staples. After 24 hours, the chance of a wound re breaking open goes up rapidly. A wound several days old will have a high chance of breakdown.

Flushing a wound with saline or salty water is a good way of reducing contamination, avoid flushing with concentrate disinfectants - it can damage tissue and slow healing. I will sometimes flush with very dilute iodine for some antibacterial action.

Often I will leave "poke holes" open to drain. That said, these injuries are potentially the most dangerous if in the groin armpit or neck they may involve large blood vessels, if over the chest they may go deep enough to collapse a lung - apply pressure to stop sucking chest wounds.  A dog with a collapsing lung will start to heave with its breathing.
If a poke hole enters the abdomen I will usually open the dog up to check for perforated intestine.
Unless there is good reason as above for sealing a poke hole, allowing these holes to stay open helps prevent abscess formation by providing drainage.

Lacerations that dont go too deeply in to muscle may be closed after cleaning. Lacerations over very mobile parts of the body - elbows, shoulder, hock , I will usually close if there is any lifting of the skin even if they are smallish - from about 5cm centimeters long, because healing will be slow due to the amount of movement when the dog walks.

Lacerations into muscle are best sutured with particular muscle holding sutures to speed healing - unstitched muscle swells a lot and can scar and depending on muscles injured, may impair movement when healed.

lacerations inside the groin or armpit often open up a big pocket - the technical term is "dead space"- this pocket, and for that matter other pockets where the skin pulls away from the body are best remedied by placing drains before stitching the skin.  Im a big fan of rubber penrose drains, these are usually pulled out 3-5 days later.
Drains are also great if a wound was contaminated before being stitched, they lessen the risk of stitches not holding.
Deadspace that isnt drained fills up with fluid -"seroma"- and is more likely to abscess.

I most often pull out stitches or staples 2 weeks later.

My choice of antibiotics depends in the type of injury, for skin deep wounds with minimal contamination I often use cephalexin, if slightly contaminated , maybe amoxicillin/clavulanic acid combo, and if deeper tissue injury maybe cephalexin plus metronidazole.
Stopping antibiotics too soon is one cause of abscesses reoccuring.

Iodine (betadine)is a very good topical disinfectant, maybe diluted 50/50, I dont use it under the skin unless diluted much more .
purple spray (usually containing oxytet) is also good for superficial wounds.

Common sense for first aid - pressure is very good for stopping bleeding, clean towels or clothing can be used to pack a wound or apply more pressure. If you can see an artery squirting, pinching it or clamping it with clean pliers or similar can help.
Keep everything as clean as you can.

Tetanus is possible in dogs with deep injuries from bacteria in the dirt in some areas, although not particularly common in dogs (differs area to area), pig dogs are slightly more prone than others because of their injury type - a vaccine is available.

cheers mate

when my dgs get ripped deep in the bush, even if a superficial skin rip, i like to close it as best as possible in there, even if its just a staple or two to stop shit getting in it on the way out.

ethos, on the subject of shaving dog hair. I am about to purchase special clippers for this as i understand human clippers wont do it.

how do you keep the fine shaved hair out of the wound, especially with fine short haired dogs, when doing this. i have heard of filling the wound with gel prior to shaving, making easier cleanup after wards - any thing else you can reccommend?

Aunty wrote on Aug 25^th, 2010 at 12:14pm:


Actually mate, and Im not taking the p*ss, but KY gel is what gets used in clinic most often for lining a wound while clipping.

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Well that's handy. He has an awful lot of that and takes it everywhere.

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How long was the intestine out of the body, shanks?
If you cant poke it in fairly quickly, then wrapping in a wet towel would help. Intestine must be kept moist or it damages quite quickly.
Also if the blood supply gets squeezed off it dies. Id be wary of causing further damage or perforating the intestine by trying to widen the hole though.
Depending on the type of injury and state of the dog, it is sometimes possible for the vet to cut and join intestine around damaged bits.

A shame about the dog thats a nasty injury tho.

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Thats a shame, a bit unlucky -the time frame might have been otherwise ok, it would be fairly heroic to try and widen the hole under battlefield conditions though.

Brilliant thread Ethos