Friday 29 January 2010
Paul again - just for completeness
Paul at 2 months
Its exactly 2 months since Paul arrived, and he has been a great success. He celebrated his 2 month anniversary by having a visit from his fans, and we went out on a nice hack during which he twice decided to blast from the back to the front, overtaking Charlie and Bailey, who were also cantering, with some determination :-)
Thursday 28 January 2010
Barefoot for people
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Mileage on the track
Monday 25 January 2010
Rockley Rehab DVD
Saturday 23 January 2010
Short blog, great day
Friday 22 January 2010
Missing: logical discussions about shoes
Thursday 21 January 2010
Belated Paul update
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Would you expect plastic surgery to make you fitter?
Tuesday 19 January 2010
Dry hoof, wet hoof
There has been lots of discussion about the "wild hoof" on UKNHCP. Its too long to go into here, but if you are interested you can find it at http://uknhcp.myfastforum.org/about1451.html
Monday 18 January 2010
"Trim every 2 weeks"...!
Friday 15 January 2010
Practise what you preach!
Thursday 14 January 2010
Moonshine!
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Inadequate frogs
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Paul's progress
This is the latest footage of Paul, who has made very rapid progress indeed - he is also in the Snow vid I posted yesterday.
He has such a great attitude, and seems really pleased to be back in work and out about about again. More on him later!
Sunday 10 January 2010
Barefoot in the snow
Friday 8 January 2010
What is good hoofcare?
This a big question for anyone who has or wants to have a performance horse. There is endless discussion about what makes good hooves; foot balance, nutrition, genetics, environment - the list goes on.
In "Feet first" we tried to give practical advice based on what we knew was effective for most horses but at the same time we are constantly learning new twists and refining our practices.
Equally, horses being horses, there will always be exceptions who break the rules and need different solutions. Its something I talked about recently in http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2009/10/dont-lose-sight-of-horse.html
All this means that if you want to assess whether hoofcare is a success for a particular horse, you have to look at the outcome, not the process.
If your horse is capable of a high level of performance, week after week and season after season, and if their level of performance is improving rather than deteriorating, then that horse's hoofcare is a success - simple as that.
Conversely of course, if thats not happening, then maybe something needs to change...
Thursday 7 January 2010
Progress?!?
On Tuesday we had a couple of inches of snow, and because of the hills only 4WD trucks could get around up here...
Wednesday 6 January 2010
We have snow too!
...think he is probably right :-)
Barney on the track - a bit impassable due to the drifts!
Luckily the yards and fir woods are still fine...
...allowing the horses plenty of room to let off steam (!)
Think we are playing catch up with the rest of the country after being fine for the last 3 weeks...
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Beach ride
What do you do on a Sunday when its too frozen to ride out? Box up and hit the beach, of course :-) Thanks to Ted for taking the photos and the great clip of Bailey, Hector and Jacko having a leg-stretch!
Monday 4 January 2010
Hoof rehab - changes over a month
Paul a month later, much sounder and back in work. You can see how much hoof he has grown already from the change in angle below the coronary band.
Saturday 2 January 2010
Barefoot horses - hunting 2010
I've now uploaded this as high definition footage, which should be sharper!