Hoof and pony shots

Pics of the whole pone, and his hooves :-)
First photo is of him before he was trimmed - his front shoes were taken off for the X-rays - but as you can see his feet were pretty long, and he was landing toe first, of course. I have some high res. digital footage, but haven't had the chance to edit that to upload on here yet.

The back of his foot is weak, but as he is young and has probably not been shod for too long, he should build it up fairly quickly.

His previous vet said that he was pottery, and showing bilateral shortness in his stride which improved when the navicular bursa was nerve-blocked, which is a fairly familiar story.

The vet said that he diagnosed the horse as having navicular, on the basis of the nerve-block and X-rays, and then he gave me a fantastic piece of advice:

"Remedial shoeing with eggbars shoes and rolled toes is an absolute must" ;-)

Actually, the last thing this horse needs is for the back of his foot to be weakened even further by being shut down with a bar shoe.

Instead, we reckon that with some time out of shoes and on a supportive surface, he will quickly start to land heel first and engage and strengthen the back of his foot.

Already, now that he is out of shoes and flying around on the pea gravel, he looks far from pottery - in fact he has fantastic movement. If he carries on improving this quickly he will be in work at the weekend!