The further adventures of "Dillon with the wedges"

There are few things better than hearing about the successes of rehab horses once they have gone  back home. I know only too well that owners face challenges when they take horses home - the biggest, ironically, is working out how to manage their grazing successfully and the next biggest is when well-meaning trimmers and farriers try to "re-balance" their horses' hooves.

Nicky, who owns Dillon, faced both of these. When she took him home she worked hard to ensure that  keeping him on her livery yard would be successful and, with her yard manager, made a brilliant job of ensuring that Dillon's management was as good as it could possibly be.

Like many rehab horses, Dillon's hooves don't look perfectly symmetrical and - like almost all rehab horses - he doesn't benefit from trimmers trying to restructure his hooves to conform with their ideal.

I posted an update from Nicky a while ago, when Dillon had suffered from a trimmer-created blip which reduced his soundness on uneven, stony ground. Its interesting that in her latest email she says:

"His feet have grown back exactly how they were before the trim –they look odd to most people but he is sound so he clearly likes them like that. We did our longest hack last week – over 8 miles of roadwork – all the better for his self trimming!"

Dillon and Nicky are such a great partnership - and its lovely to be able to report how well they are doing and to be able to add this footage, which I am thrilled about. As Nicky says: "Dillon hasn’t been out to anything resembling a clinic or competition for at least 18 months, nearer two years."

Nicky asked me to post a warning(!)..."If you want to put it on the blog please warn everyone I am a nervous numpty who  doesn't ride very well and doesn’t help Dillon at all, he is an angel to put up with me"...but she is being far too harsh on herself. Although its true that Dillon is an angel, she has not only put in the hours of scrubbing to make him look absolutely immaculate - no mean feat in itself - but is riding him beautifully quietly, despite her understandable nerves and being under scrutiny from the judge, the audience and now the blog readers - fab job, Nicky and I will let her have the final word... 

"Despite being critical of myself and how I hold him back I  am absolutely delighted at how he behaved and how he went today,  I was so proud of him and bits of it felt fantastic, and the judge was very positive about him as a horse and I learnt some good tips. I know I say this a lot but I never dared to dream we would be out doing dressage again, but hopefully with this good experience we will now get him out to a few competitions."