A rider who needed surgery on a horrific burn suffered when she got tangled in electric fence by her spooking horse wants to warn others of the risks.
Lily Tsang has recovered from the injuries she sustained in March 2021, when in an instant, “it all changed”, but she says she was lucky not to have been more badly affected.
“I would never have believed it could happen,” she told H&H. “I feel almost obliged to speak about it because people still struggle to believe it.”
Lily was bringing her horse Horace in from the field as she always did, along a wide walkway between fences, when he got a shock.
“I don’t know why, to this day, but for whatever reason he touched the electric fence with his nose,” she said. “That of course made him shoot back, then he went forwards. I kept hold of him but he reared, and the fence snagged his toe, so of course he pulled it back towards him.
“He was spinning, the fence was attached to his foot, and he wrapped the fencing round my leg. I ended up on the floor and he charged off up the field taking the fence with him.
“As he was going, it was wrapping round my leg – if you picture a ship’s anchor let go, and the rope coiling round, that was it, my leg was in the perfect place for it to wrap round as he charged off.”
Lily said a post came out of the ground and the tape snapped, freeing both of them. At that stage, she did not think she had been badly hurt.
“I was a bit ‘oh my god. Has that really just happened?’” she said. “I was amazed he hadn’t trampled me. I went after the horse – and of course he was in the wrong field and galloping round – and thought ‘That’s going to hurt in the morning’. I thought it was just bruised and grazed.”
Two days later, Lily sought medical advice as her whole leg was looking bruised and blistered, so she went to a walk-in centre.
“The doctors didn’t quite understand how it had happened, but they said ‘Why didn’t you come in straight away?’” she said. “They had to check my heart; apparently any electric shock can have serious implications for internal organs. They said if I’d come in straight away, I’d have been on a drip and had to stay in.”
Lily had a couple of appointments at the centre, then was referred to a specialist burns unit. Some of the skin on her leg had gone black and necrotic, and she had a big haematoma.
She had to undergo two operations; one to dig out the dead tissue, after which she had a portable vacuum pump fitted to drain the wound, then a skin graft.
“It’s fine now,” Lily said. “But the dressing changes were a little traumatic at times! I’m not squeamish but when the nurse first took it off, I thought ‘Oh god, is that my leg’. I said I hadn’t expected that and she said ‘Sorry, I should have warned you’! But now it’s all good, just a big scar.”
Lily also had to deal with the pain of losing Horace, who suffered colic the day she left hospital. He was taken to an equine hospital but had to be put down.
“That really crushed me,” she said. “He was such a good boy and I’d had so much fun with him. I’d go in for dressing changes and the nurses would say ‘You’re the one with the horse, how is he?’”
Lily has since bought another horse, Isaac (pictured), and has been training for triathlon, in which she hopes to compete this season.
Her main message is to warn other people of the risks of electric fencing, even in situations horses and riders experience every day with no incident.
“It was just so quick,” she said. “It was something I did every day, I had yard boots on, trousers, I’m always careful and it was a freak accident; in the blink of an eye, it all changed.
“Hopefully this doesn’t ever happen to anyone else but I was blown away, and just wanted to shine a light on it. I’m certainly more wary with electric fence now!”
You might also be interested in:
Horse owners warned to check electric fencing regularly
The RSPCA has urged horse owners to check their electric fencing after being called twice in a week to reports
Colic in horses: what every horse owner needs to know
Electric fencing for horses – everything you need for a temporary setup or strip-grazing
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