Product Review

Desitin. No, not for me. Not for a baby either (you can imagine the strange looks I got, a seventeen year old with Desitin checking out at WalMart... almost as good as the time when I had to get newborn-sized diapers for a foster mare with VERY petite hooves when she had an abcess two years ago. RIP Emma Jean).

Of course, it was for my horse. She got into SOMETHING out in the pasture and I came to the stables about two weeks ago to find her skin peeling all over around her right nostril. It looked like a rash of some sort. I asked our resident vet tech (whose sweet mare is ironically named Itchie) what she might recommend to fix it. "Desitin! I use everytime Itchie gets an itchy."

I was a bit taken aback. I was not about to put DIAPER RASH CREAM on Greta's nose. But I went ahead and gave it a try. I put it on her nose that same night, and she didn't seem to mind. She looked at me like, "What did you just put on me and do I look stupid?"

Oh, Greta, you know me well. I told her that she looked fine and that it smelled like Baby Dior perfume and it was good for her. The next day, that massive expanse of peeling ugliness had been sized down to one last square centimeter. I put it on again and it was gone the next day.

A second testimony: yesterday I took Greta out and thoroughly groomed her, per usual. But Lo! I felt an odd rough spot on the cowlick of her belly, where the horsey belly button is. The very early beginnings of a "summer sore". I not-quite-fondly remember a plump baby gelding in my horsey past who used to get the worst "summer sores". They would get huge and get crusty and then bleed. Absolutely disgusting, but far more worse, it was extremely painful for him and the flies would not leave it alone. Even with a big swath of SWAT around it, there would still be one or two flies messing around with it. One summer it got elongated enough that the girth could be put on some day and some days, even with the super soft fleece covering, he would still pull back and attempt to break his halter trying to get away from the pain. Yikes.

As you can imagine, he was not my favorite horse to ride during the summer.

Coming out of my cringing flashback, I looked under to double check if what I felt was right. I could not see anything apparent, but it still felt unusually rough there. Desitin was the only thing I had that I felt could perhaps do the most good.

I come out today, and the skin didn't feel rough. It felt quite soft, and a some of the hair was growing back. This Desitin stuff is freaking me out.

So Desitin works.

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Now as far as me referring to this rough spot as a "summer sore" is not very accurate, as it is not proud or granulated flesh and I don't believe it has been caused by bugs or stomach worms, so it's not really a sore, it's just a weird callous. I have met a few horses who just have this rough callous on their belly button area that appears during summer, and can get worse if it's not checked on, and their owners just called them "summer sores". I looked it up and nothing seems to match one side or the other, so for now I'm just calling them "summer sores".

Any ideas?

That's also freaking me out :)