I'm always happy to hear from people and try to answer queries as best I can - often the best option is to send people to the book, as there is a lot more detail there and it saves me repeating myself ;-)
I thought it was worth putting on here, though, a reminder that I can't give people specific advice unless I've seen their horse myself - each horse is different and a programme that works well for one will probably need to be radically modified for another horse - there's just no "one size fits all", especially when you are talking about rehabbing horses which have been long-term lame.
You need to be very careful not to over-stress hooves straight out of shoes, which is why the surfaces we have here are essential; a level of work which may be fine for a horse here, which can work on pea gravel, might be totally inappropriate if the horse had to work on tarmac instead, for example.
I can understand that you don't want to give advice on specific horses. But you have to understand that we are desperate out here! There are so few people that have seen many navicular horses. Here are my burning questions. They are general in nature though. As you see a horse recover do you begin under saddle exercise at the gait that they are sound in. Ex. if they are sound at the walk do you walk them under saddle even if they are not completely sound at trot? Do you give any palliative drugs such as bute or Adequan as you progress through recovery? How long (in general) is it for horses to recover...months? years? You may not be able to answer these questions but maybe you could include some answers in your next book. I just looked yesterday and your current book is not available yet at Amazon. I can't wait to order it. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI can reassure you that having your horse at Nic's is a potentially amazing opportunity to help horses..but I am totally with you Nic on every horse and their treatment plan is different......look at Dexter and Hector, how fast they improved, but this is not the case for so many! Until dexter came to yours and stayed there we were not sure on time, plans etc etc
ReplyDelete