Saturday 25 June 2011

The beginnings of a heel first landing

I had a good day yesterday with one of the UKNHCP students, Nadia Meadows, who did one of her final Practical days with me.  We spent a lot of time looking at horses and hooves (of course) and discussing why most wouldn't benefit from being trimmed ;-)  I was delighted to discover that due to her experience with her own (and many other) horses Nadia has definite celery tendencies and I was only too happy to encourage them!

While there was a spare pair of hands available I also took the opportunity to get some new footage of Flynn.
If you remember, Flynn arrived with long toes and high heels and was clearly landing toe first in front and sliding his hind feet.  Over the next month he progressed fairly rapidly to achieving a much better landing with his LF but his RF remained stubbornly toe first.
This was to a large extent due to the fact that Flynn had developed a nasty split in the central sulcus of his frog which you can see in the photo above.  This had become infected and sore over many months.  His owner was aware of it but its the sort of problem which can be stubborn and extremely difficult to get rid of, particularly when a horse is in shoes.   Once out of shoes, a split like this can be painful enough to stop a horse landing heel first, and it certainly slowed Flynn's progress with that foot.


Flynn comparison: 13th May-24th June from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

Finally, though, a good few weeks after his LF had already changed and his overall stride length improved, Flynn is just beginning to land more correctly on the RF as well.  He still has his medio-lateral balance to sort out, but he is growing in a straighter hoof.  That update will be for another day!

4 comments:

Media Wurzel said...

Thanks for this Nic. Great to see all three time frames in quick succession. It makes the changes so clear. I must say when I lead him back from our adventure (looking for the mysterious route of doom back to yours)I thought this was beginning to happen.Great to see if confirmed in glorious slow-mo though.

Ligeda said...

I had a mare that came to me with a nasty central sulcus frog infection. I tried packing it (which cured one foot) but the other (that was super upright with a high high heel) just wouldn't budge. What finally did the job was White Lightening. I wrapped her foot in a plastic bag and closed the bag with duct tape and let the white lightening do its thing. It is gentle on the foot tissues but kills all bacteria in the foot. One treatment and it never came back.
http://www.grandcircuitinc.com/products.asp?cat=White+Lightning
Good luck!

Nic Barker said...

Yep, thats what I use as well, Ligeda :-) Though in Flynn's case its taken several sessions to make a difference, but in the end we are getting there. Its good stuff.

tazang20 said...

Hi, Read this post with interest, Just to let you know on our yard shod or barefoot, NT Dry which is the UK name of No Thrush Treatment is working well on our yard for this same problem and I now stock this product for anyone who wants to try it! If I can help just give us an email @ tazang20@hotmail.co.uk