Oscar - a study in incremental change

For the first time in days - perhaps weeks, as its rained every day (I think) in Feb - the sun was shining at Rockley yesterday morning :-)  We've got reasonable daylight hours back for the first time since October and suddenly it feels as if winter may be nearly gone and spring may be on its way...  

Perhaps it won't last, but I seized the chance to take some hoof photos of Oscar and Dilly.  They have only been here a short time, but even so their hooves are starting to change...  Oscar gets to go today, and I will post Dilly's photos tomorrow. 

Here's Oscar's RF when he arrived in shoes... all credit to his fab farrier who has achieved a good breakover, lovely hoof pastern axis and heels in good shape too.  The shoe actually looks part of the foot, which isn't always the case by any means(!). 

Immediately out of a shoe, however, the foot looks as if it has collapsed - there is a relatively longer toe and more underrun heel.  But look how a week has improved the same foot (below) and check out how low the nail holes have already grown...

After just over a week out of shoes, his toe is shorter and if anything he has a slightly better heel angle than in shoes.

For comparison, here is his RF - solar shot - on the day he arrived and just over a week later.   Here again, you can see what a good job his farrier was doing of keeping his toe short and the caudal hoof engaged, but in the photo below, even only just over a week later, his frog is more developed and the caudal hoof is becoming even more robust.  

This should be a sign that he is starting to change from a toe first to heel first landing - that will be the next footage to record.  But in the meantime, one of the biggest changes is that his feet are now warm, rather than stone cold as they were the day he arrived :-)