The rain it raineth every day - and a Kingsley update

Astonishingly, its raining.  It rained all last week (the only exception was Tuesday morning, if I remember rightly), it rained all weekend and its raining today.   Along with the other inhabitants of the south west of England, I was on my knees in front of the Countryfile weather forecast last night and apparently there is a glimmer of hope - in the form of a high pressure weather system - hovering out to our left which may come in by the middle of the week...There will certainly be a newsflash on this blog when it stops raining - that will be the sensation of the year so far...

Unfortunately the rain also arrived at about the same time as Pauline yesterday when she came to see Kingsley.  Fortunately, Pauline comes from Scotland originally and so was dressed for the occasion and not to be put off by a downpour.  The fog then rolled in as well so all in all, getting footage for Wiola was going to be extremely problematic.

In the end we took Solomon and Kingsley out on a short hack and then came back and filmed once the rain had eased off a bit.  We tried to get some comparable footage but it was rather a case of nip and tuck.


Kingsley  - walking comparison from Nic Barker on Vimeo.


This is the walking footage - I've included the earlier dates for comparison, but we didn't manage to film him in walk in the school yesterday, so you have to make allowances for the fact that he is on concrete yesterday and was on sand previously.

Kingsley is still at the stage where footing makes a big difference to him - not surprising when you look at the new angle of hoof growth which is coming in.  As you can see, he is growing new hoof at a good rate and should have grown a complete new hoof capsule by the time he is 5 or 6 months out of shoes.

Meanwhile, the contrast between new and old hoof capsule dramatically illustrates the problems he has had with medio-lateral balance.  Until the whole hoof is in the right place under his limb, he won't feel the full benefits of better biomechanics, so its not surprising that at the 3 month stage he doesn't yet have perfect movement.

Kingsley - trotting comparison from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

I've included the trotwork from 12th December as a comparison.  Not a dramatic change but an improvement nonetheless.