2 Steps Forward, 0 Steps Back This Time!

You know the saying 2 steps forward, 1 step back? Well more things are taking steps forward than stepping backwards.  Actually there haven’t been any steps backward during this latest trim cycle.

 Sonny even walked freely across the stony driveway on his way to where I was doing his trim this afternoon. You can see the pretrim shots at the link to my Photobucket album at the end of this post. There is wall all the way round all hooves to share the weight now. That’s amazing I think!

 I’ve cleaned out the collateral grooves again today. In the pretrim shots you can see how they had filled in again. Linda Harris says it is old jammed up bar material coming down from up inside the hoof. Whatever it is it has to go. It does want to let go as you can see it starting to flake off in parts but still far too tight let go totally. So I am helping it!

I'm also still doing a shallow bevel to the walls around toes between pillars, just enough to releive breakover leverage. I redo it each week. It's been 6weeks since I did the first attempt at the rocker & bevel that turned out to be too much at this time for his front feet. However from just doing the light bevel there is a new tighter angle starting to appear below the coronet band which is a good sign the bevel is working.

 The shape of the sole/wall connection is improving markedly. There is a proper join now where the sole meets the wall. However there’s no discernible whiteline yet. When I see that I will know for sure the connection between inner wall & inside foot has been re-established successfully. Then I think he will be ready to ride again.

 I’ve been thinking I could start a little light roundpen work & riding soon but then thought about the absent white line. No whiteline means no proper connective tissue has regrown yet. It might be coming down but the hoof that is meeting the ground now was made in the coronet about 4mths ago, well after remedial treatment was started. The RF coronet band has a scare inside it also that causes the hoof to break away as it reaches the ground. Obviously that bit still has reduced blood supply to it inside the coronet band, therefore it can’t make proper hoof yet. So that might cause problems if I start asking for work while there is still a weakness in that hoof.

 It is bone dry here. You can see in the photos the grass is quite dead. The ground is rock hard as are the feet of all my horses. I am going through one dremel grinder stone bit on each trimming day. So one bit does 12 feet. Usually a grinder stone bit would last several trim days. I have been letting the trough run over to make a wet patch infront where they can stand on moist ground for a while. The little dam at the bottom of their current paddock is just a muddy hole.

The photos from this trim can be found here:-   www.photobucket.com/2013_January_Sonnys_Feet

 

 He's lost a fair bit of weight this year & I haven't been feeding any hay, just their small amount of pellets with minerals, salt & oil each day. There's still masses of grass in the paddocks but it's very dry. However there is still a lot of green couch in under it if they will just stick their heads down into the tall dry grass to find the green stuff.