Page 70 - December 2015

When doing any mouth exam, make sure you have one finger hooked in the halter so that either you go with the horse if he pulls back, or are quick enough to release your hold to turn him loose and let him go.
and continues to hang on as the horse is pulling back, and it’s not a good thing!”
Tongue BiTTen By AnoTher horse
About eight years ago, Nelson took care of a stallion that suffered a severe tongue injury. The owner had two stallions who were kept next to each other. Apparently, they were squabbling and one stallion grabbed the other through the fence, by his tongue. “It was a bizarre injury, lacerating the tongue all the way through. In all the reading I’d done about tongue injuries, the literature said that tongue lacerations don’t heal very well and that horses often end up losing that part of the tongue,” says Nelson.
She thought she would gamble and try to repair it. “We had nothing to lose, and it might work. I thought if I sutured it and could protect the stitches while it started to heal, we could give it a chance. His tongue healed perfectly, even though it was cut full thickness, more than halfway across the tongue,” she says. That horse had no problems eating or drinking, and today you’d never guess he ever had an injury.
imporTAnce of The Tongue To eATing And swAllowing
The tongue is an amazing organ—very flex- ible and agile, with strong muscles. “The part we see is fairly flat, but there is a big lump at the back that is used as an aid in swallowing,” says Connally. “There is a very thick muscle
If a horse can stand calmly, using a speculum to hold the mouth open can make it easier to work on the tongue.
back there, and if you look in the mouth and see it, you might think there’s something wrong with the tongue but that bulge of muscle is nor- mal. The horse’s tongue is very useful, with the long mouth area to help push food all the way back for swallowing,” he explains.
If the horse loses part of the tongue, he
has to adjust. “A horse that has lost very much of the tongue (or if it has to be removed after injury) will eat differently, but he generally does okay. If a cow loses her tongue, she starves because she uses it to pull food into her mouth (pasture grass, hay, or a concentrated feed).
I saw that happen with a bull that got a big abscess on his tongue—perhaps from a wire laceration—and his tongue fell off. We could not keep him alive. We fed him everything we could think of, such as nice third cutting alfalfa that he could just grab with his mouth, but he couldn’t eat enough to stay alive.” By contrast, horses do surprisingly well because they can grab feed with their teeth and also pull things into their mouth with their lips.
Most horse owners panic if their horse suf- fers a serious tongue injury. “They think he’s going to die if he’s lost his tongue, but these horses generally adjust—even with a lot of the tongue missing—and do fine,” says Nelson. You would never suspect that they’d lost it if you didn’t look in their mouth.
The bulge at the very back of the tongue, used as an aid in swallowing, is generally still there. Most injuries occur farther forward. Even if a horse bites off his tongue, it would be a for- ward portion. “The mare that I saw who cut her tongue so badly lost about 1/3 of the tongue and she did fine,” says Connally. “About the only thing that could harm the tongue at the rear of the mouth would be an abscess or something
Even if a horse loses part of his tongue, he will typically adjust and do surprisingly well because he can grab feed with his teeth and also can pull things into his mouth with his lips.
caused by sharp feed as it was ready to swallow. The rear part of the tongue is attached to the epiglottis, so a severe injury at the back could interfere with swallowing,” he says.
secondAry involvemenT of The Tongue
Occasionally, a horse with a guttural pouch infection has a swallowing problem. “The guttural pouch is close to the hyoid apparatus around the back of the throat,” says Connally. “This can affect the way the tongue functions. It’s more an affect on swallowing rather than the tongue itself, but it’s all tied together,” he says.
There are a few toxic plants, such as yel- low starthistle, that can cause paralysis of
the tongue. “Some animals with swallowing problems, that you might think have a tongue problem, actually have rabies. Drooling and inability to swallow is one of the most common signs of rabies,” says Connally.
Several infectious diseases affect the tongue, such as vesicular stomatitis (VS). “The horse develops huge blisters on tongue and lips. If
I see blisters on the tongue, I must call the federal veterinarian because VS is a reportable disease. I’ve seen a couple cases that we thought were VS, but the results came back negative. So, we looked around and found old car bat- teries in the pasture. The horse had licked the batteries and developed blisters!”
Nerve damage can affect tongue movement. Facial paralysis (damage to the nerve that controls movement on the side of the face) can cause the muzzle/lip to droop on that side, and the horse might have trouble eating and drink- ing. If the lips can’t close, the horse can’t get proper suction for drinking and must immerse his face/muzzle in water deep enough to cover the entire mouth opening.
Any blow or severe pressure on the facial nerve can damage it. “The halter goes over the facial nerve in many cases, and if the horse pulls back hard or is laid down for anesthesia and
the halter presses into that side of the head for very long, the facial nerve may be pinched. It takes awhile for the nerve to heal and regener- ate, though the healing can be stimulated more quickly with acupuncture. The acupuncture needle can be placed alongside the damaged nerve, and then an electrical stimulator can be used to maximize the stimulation,” he says.
The tongue is innervated by different nerves than the lips. “But if there is facial paralysis, the tongue may bulge out on that side (making it harder for the horse to hold it in proper position
68 SPEEDHORSE, December 2015
equine health