Progress, Slow but Steady!

Today I rode Sonny again for a few minutes after several weeks off while his feet go over an abscess.

His feet seemed to all get a bit sore when he got an abscess in the LF several weeks ago. So I eased up with his work & just did the tricks he likes to do.  I couldn't find any good reason for the abscess. There hadn't been any rain, I didn't ask him to do any hard riding & I hadn't changed his feed or minerals. Cas keeps reminding me that an abscess is a good thing, being the outward sign of internal healing. But something must have caused the inflamation in the first place to need healing.

Early last week I saw him galloping around & the next day I called them all up in the morning & he came bucking & farting & galloping too so that is a good thing. I decided his feet must be feeling a lot better so it was time to start working him again.

Since I found a good grinding style bit (like a rough sharpening stone) to use in my electric Dremel it has been a lot easier to do all my horse’s feet. Just now with the weather as dry as it is & the ground as hard as it is, their feet are rock hard & shiny as. A knife & even a rasp just scoots right off the hard plastic-like sole. I usually am not able to do their feet when they’re in this condition. Soaking makes no difference. But the little grinding stone bit makes light work of the hard surface horn. Once under the outer shell the horn is quite malleable.

I have been trying to use the info I recently learned about how the sole tubules grow to slow the forward growth of the sole at the toe. To that end I have been regularly (every few days) removing the little bit of sole  (about 2ml wide) that wants to grow across the lower edge of the wall, then making sure I don’t rasp too much off the walls so that I leave enough wall height that wall & sole equally bare the total weight. That seems to be allowing the sole to bunch up behind the wall rather than be forced to run out under the flaring wall at the toes. It also does the same thing where there is a break in the wall like where the old splits are growing out & in a couple of places where Sonny has broken out the side of the hoof a little.

I can see that the growth style of the soles in general is changing & the walls are now inclined to begin wrapping tightly to the bunched up edge of the sole on some hooves.

Another thing I am starting to see is much less of what appeared to be sidebone (or maybe it could have been ringbone) mostly on his front feet. I think the inner structures are actually sitting higher inside the capsules now rather than how they were previously where they had sunk right down. My take on it is that the soles are thickening thereby pushing the inner structures higher, heading back towards a more correct place. Still a long way to go, though. Originally I thought he would be ready for more xrays about this time but I think I will leave it until maybe end of January or ealry February 2013 to allow more remedial time.

Over the last 10 days I have done a little on Sonny’s front feet 3 times, each time to relocate the  heels back more. I use the Dremel to carve shape into the heel platforms because his feet are so shiny they slip around on the slopes clad in this dry crisp (lawn)short grass.

Removing the lumps that grow on each side of the frog where the bars should end has been helping too. I feel they cause the sole to grow warped or more to the point they are deformed bars growing warped into lumps. Cas used her grinder to remove them but I couldn’t do it properly until I got the Dremel working again.

There is still old blood up behind the toe wall of the RF. When I take that little bit of sole off that creeps out across the bottom of the wall I can see the blood colour still growing out. The distance from the tip of frog to toe inner wall on the RF hoof is still longer than the same measurement on the LF. However when seen from above the RF is a slightly smaller hoof all round. It seems like the RF is beginning to shed parts of it's sole too. Or perhaps the sole has worn off (grown out) to reveal old sole abscess damage.

I like the way the LF sole in particular is beginning to show a good seam connection to the wall. It will soon start that bunching up or convex shaped process that the Happy Hoof lady was talking about that is so important in growing sole depth. The RF sole/wall connection is still quite raggedy most of the way round. However the inner wall is now starting to bind & actually curl a bit more tightly to the sole rather than flaring out flat. So that has to be a good thing.

Just on the subject of the Happy Hoof Lady. I have left messages for her on her youtube channel but had no reply yet. However she does reply to people occasionally so there is hope yet. The link to her channel is in my previous post.

 Here are 2 shots from today’s photos with the rest at this link:-  http://photobucket.com/sonnysfeet_november2012

 This is the first time I have taken a full set of photos all round all 4 feet since his founder I think.

Remeber that if you want to talk to me about a particular photo, each is numbered individually, so just copy the writing off the photo & I can open it in my photo album on my computer & know exactly which photo you are talking about.