Despite the foul weather (which is continuing today even though the nice man from the met office said it would be dry this week..DOH!), there is lots of good news at Rockley :-)
I haven't had the time to update the website for a few months now, so apologies for that. It means that the new horses haven't gone up there yet, including the latest arrival whom I blogged about in July.
We call him Hector, and he has settled in very well. He is only 6, but is terribly grown up, and when Sarah Braithwaite was down with her ditzy young Arab he proved to be an excellent nanny - possibly because he and Morris were totally colour-coordinated, both in bright orange...
He hacks out on his own or with the other horses, and although when he arrived he had been diagnosed as bilaterally lame and short-striding, according to his former vet, he is now sound on fields and roads, and will pick his way over stony ground.
He was landing severely toe-first when he arrived, and from the photos of his hooves you can see why he had had problems.
The top photo shows him on the day he arrived, with long toes and heels starting to under-run. Even so, within a couple of weeks on the tracks and yards here, he was landing heel-first, which is the main reason he has improved so quickly.
The lower photo shows him 6 weeks later, and you can see how much new and better hoof wall he has already grown.
wow, what an improvement!! I showed mum and she thought could really see the difference.........so weldone you have trainned mum and me really well in the barefoot world!!
ReplyDeleteYou've got your eye in now, and you'll be seeing hoof stuff everywhere ;-)
ReplyDeleteand is that Rufus or Barney's lovely hock in the first photo?
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Hmmm, probably Barney, as Rufus has hardly left his bd in front of the woodburner for the last 6 weeks!
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