Continued
Fractures
For our purposes of easy understanding, a broken bone (irrespective of cause – usually a hit) is a fracture. Mechanical trauma (a nice phrase for a ‘hit‘), if severe enough, will crack the bone or even shatter it.
Here in Guyana, we have some weird ideas about fractures. I have heard people (non-medical, of course) argue ‘knowledgeably‘ about simple and compound fractures. A simple fracture, they say, occurs when the bone is broken in only one place; a compound fracture, according to them, is the breaking of the bone in many places. Well, that concept is not correct. A simple fracture, simply means that the broken bone does not project through the skin. On the other hand, in the case of a compound fracture, the bone has made contact with the external environment. In the latter case, the skin is broken and there is an open wound. Of course, in such instances, it is easy for germs (infection) – via the open wound – to enter.
Some bones just crack or bend; this is called a Greenstick fracture. It usually occurs in young dogs. In fact, there is
