How not to trim - Beano's update

Beano will be going home on Friday so its time for his last update. As is often the case, its only when I brought up his most recent photos compared with his previous ones that you get a true picture of what is happening with his feet.

Here he is on day one - not a bad foot but relatively long toes and slightly under-run heels. Still, lots to like and a pretty healthy foot.

Here is the update I posted at the beginning of Feb - that would be about week 9 for him. The toe has shortened and the heels are coming back. Its a foot which is changing and the shorter toe has had the effect of changing the hoof/pastern axis too. If you looked ONLY at that, you would say it was more "correct" in the first photo...

...but look at him today and the hoof/pastern axis is perfect again. That's because there is now more support for the palmar hoof (you can see that its more substantial now) and that, combined with the shorter toe, has brought the foot into a more supportive position under the limb. 

To look at his toe - compared to 3 weeks ago - it looks for all the world as if I have dug out my rasp and rolled his toe. I haven't :-) That's him wearing his break-over for himself. Very nicely he has done it, too, and you can also see that it is perfectly in line with the angle of the new hoof capsule. 

Its a really good example of how a hoof will grow and wear correctly if its given the opportunity to do so. And, more importantly, that a "correct" shape should be the RESULT of wear and stimulus - not imposed in spite of it. 

Solar views of the same foot are also encouraging. His frog is now much more substantial than on day one and as his frog has strengthened his heels have moved back. 

Equally interesting is the way his foot is re-orientating. In the first photo his foot is asymmetric on this view - the lateral side is more substantial than the medial side. Yet from the top, his foot looked fine.

 In the middle photo - at about 9 weeks - his foot is in the process of rebalancing and by the time of today's photos the medial and lateral sides are more even (though the medial heel still needs to improve). It will be fascinating to see how he develops over the next few months.