Equus Maximus

New boy Max, another Belgian warmblood, arrived yesterday. He was, like many horses, in remedial shoes but that wasn't the biggest worry for either his owner or me. The issue we had was that Max in the past hasn't been able to be safely turned out with other horses so his first day was going to be a challenge for all of us. 

First of all, Max had to be filmed and photographed and once we'd assessed his movement his shoes had to come off. 

Bar shoes always make it difficult to assess the health of the underlying foot, particularly the frog and heels, but out of shoes things became a lot clearer. 

Not too bad a foot - there is some medio-lateral imbalance but the frogs are a lot healthier than I thought they might be which is always a good starting point.

It will be interesting to see how Max's feet change over the next few weeks and as usual I will post new photos in 3 or 4 weeks.  

And now for the moment of truth; unshod it was finally safe for Max to meet my boys, Felix and Charlie, who are always on duty meeting and greeting the new arrivals. They are incredibly good judges of character and Max ticked all the boxes by being equally polite to them.

So he has taken his first steps towards better feet and a better social life - not a bad day's (and night's) work.