We Went for a Short Ride Last Week!

About 10days ago I rode Sonny for a short ride out along the old highway!  :-)

I put his Easyboot Trails on his front feet with the new inner pads I made which I posted photos of a couple of posts back. The pads wore well. Sonny went well too. I just let him go at his own pace which was an average speed walk with a little shuffle trot now & then.  We only went about 1.5k in total & took about 30mins but I think it was a good test of his feet.

There hasn’t been much cavorting in the paddock recently because of rain to see if he is lame at all. But yesterday he ran through a gate & took off down the paddock when separated from Jude & he was limping a tiny bit as he made the sharp turn but I didn’t get to see it long enough to determine which leg it was.

Supplements 

Apart from that I have changed the supplement back to Jenny’s Provide It. I saved some from the last order because I had noticed that once their feet naturally wanted to stop growing for winter, the Dr Kohnke’s supplement would get them growing again, whereas Jenny’s didn’t. So I got some DK’s Cell Provide & changed all my horses onto that after their feet stopped growing for winter. They soon all started growing again which is why I have been able to keep trimming every 2-3wks. Usually there is nothing to trim for about 6wks at a time. So once the wet season arrived again I changed them back to Jenny’s Provide It to compare horn quality & growth speed. It will be interesting to see how their feet grow over the next several weeks.

 

 

3wks since last full trim. 

I was shocked to see it has been 3wks since I last did a full trim. I think I got out of sync because I have been redoing the toe bevel a lot more, almost every second day some weeks. It sure makes a huge difference to the new growth angle when the bevel is kept perfect.

Stronger toe bevel.
This trim I have made the toe bevel a little stronger just to see what happens. Previously if I did that & removed any of the inner wall, the sole would grow out from under the wall due to forward pushing pressure from the underrun heels. I’m aiming at starting the mapping method again which involves doing a rocker under the toe from just infront of the tip of P3. That removes more than just a tiny bit of inner wall under the toe. It takes a bit of sole too, so this week’s stronger toe bevel is the first step down that path. Previously when I tried the mapping with rocker, it made Sonny sore, just as it has done 3yrs ago when I first tried it. Back then I thought I must have done too strong of a rocker. But when I did it late last year he went sore too & it may still have been too much. It all points to the sole still being too thin even though it’s clear to see from last trim photos that his bony column is rising up through the capsule somewhat.

This mapping with toe rocker will be the last stage in repairing his feet. Hopefully after 1 or 2 growth cycles the whole hoof should be in good shape again.

Hope to ride again.

All being well, I will ride Sonny again this coming weekend as this lot of rain will be finished by then apparently. Just another short ride along the road in boots. It’s as much as my back can tolerate at this stage anyway. It’s just as well we didn’t go for a longer ride last time because my back is still getting over the ride in a saddle. He would like to get at the cattle in the paddocks over the back fence & along the roadsides but unfortunately he will just have to dream! I’m sure the owners of those cattle don’t want some horse chasing them around!

Here is the link to this week’s album:- http://s340.beta.photobucket.com/user/claireT_2008/library/2013%20%20all%20photos/2013%20February2%20Sonnys%20Feet

 

Nice looking feet.

I like the photos this week. It’s easy to see the fronts are slowly developing quite a nice shape now. Even the backs are beginning to respond to digging out all that excess bar material & doing the bevel under the toe wall too. The length of the back feet from heel to toe has shortened quite a bit too.

 

 

                                                                            

Note in this photo above of the RF just how tightly the new growth is coming down from the coronet band now. In the first photo in this post of the LF you can see the new tighter angle is well established now. Hopefuly keeping the toe bevel strong will allow that tighter angle to grow all the way down & eliminate all that toe lamella wedge totally. The heels of this RF do seem to be quite a lot more upright now too.

I tried really hard to work within the software restrictions of the new Photobucket web albums but I still got it wrong even on the 5^th attempt to upload & the whole series of photos has come out all back to front with the fronts at the end of the list rather than the beginning. I gave up!  grrrr  >:-[