New girl Candy and more on Legend...

New girl Candy arrived in terrible weather on Monday - luckily she is from the west of England so the rain will not be too much of a shock for her, but I expect better of even Exmoor in July...

In a contrast to the vet I wrote about last week, her vet has been very supportive from the first, which is lovely. In another good omen she is the first "NFU" horse to arrive since the Ombudsman's decision and they have already confirmed her rehab will be covered - great news, and thanks again Catherine!

Candy is 17 and has been shod for many years though she came out of shoes a few weeks ago. Her heels and frogs are weak and the black patterning on her soles is a hint that she has probably had sole damage too.

On MRI not surprisingly she has navicular bone damage as well as DDFT and impar ligament damage.

From this angle you can see the beginning of a better angle change but interestingly she came out of shoes on the same day that Legend arrived here. If you compare his hoof growth over the same period (which I blogged yesterday) to hers, you can see that she is a lot slower - in fact the nail holes are still visible in her feet, which I would expect to see gone normally in about 6 weeks.

Our job then is to speed up the rate of improvement and enable her to grow a much stronger palmar hoof. More on Candy soon!


Meanwhile, I wanted to include Legend's footage which I forgot to add to yesterday's blog...

Its interesting to see how his landing has changed - he is now landing heel first but his long flipper toe is impairing his movement though it is getting better all the time.

For all the reasons I posted about yesterday, it would (IMO) be counter-productive to trim his toe at the moment but once his hoof capsule is grown in at the new angle his landing will definitely be even better.