The beginnings of a heel first landing

I had a good day yesterday with one of the UKNHCP students, Nadia Meadows, who did one of her final Practical days with me.  We spent a lot of time looking at horses and hooves (of course) and discussing why most wouldn't benefit from being trimmed ;-)  I was delighted to discover that due to her experience with her own (and many other) horses Nadia has definite celery tendencies and I was only too happy to encourage them!

While there was a spare pair of hands available I also took the opportunity to get some new footage of Flynn.

If you remember, Flynn arrived with long toes and high heels and was clearly landing toe first in front and sliding his hind feet.  Over the next month he progressed fairly rapidly to achieving a much better landing with his LF but his RF remained stubbornly toe first.

This was to a large extent due to the fact that Flynn had developed a nasty split in the central sulcus of his frog which you can see in the photo above.  This had become infected and sore over many months.  His owner was aware of it but its the sort of problem which can be stubborn and extremely difficult to get rid of, particularly when a horse is in shoes.   Once out of shoes, a split like this can be painful enough to stop a horse landing heel first, and it certainly slowed Flynn's progress with that foot.


Flynn comparison: 13th May-24th June from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

Finally, though, a good few weeks after his LF had already changed and his overall stride length improved, Flynn is just beginning to land more correctly on the RF as well.  He still has his medio-lateral balance to sort out, but he is growing in a straighter hoof.  That update will be for another day!