Gorgeous George

Time for a proper George update as I know both his family and his fan club are dying for news :-)  As a bit of background, George arrived just over 2 weeks ago and had a raft of issues diagnosed on MRI despite having been barefoot for a long time and having basically strong feet.  I wrote about him here, because its always salutary to remember that hoof health is about a lot more than shoes or no shoes. 

So here is an interesting shot of George's feet the day he arrived - the nail holes you can see are because (quite understandably and sensibly) his owners and vet had tried a set of shoes when he first went lame, although they were taken off when they didn't improve him. 

This is the same foot 2 weeks later - the photos below are also all taken 2 weeks apart.  The important thing to notice is that the foot already has better overall balance - he is happy to weight the back third of his foot, which he isn't in the top photo, and as a result his hoof pastern axis is better.

As always with hooves, there is no point simply looking at static photos, so here is his footage:

George from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

His toe first landing has improved at the same time as his caudal hoof health - its chicken and egg, really.

I haven't trimmed his heels, by the way - the long wall has mostly been worn away on the tracks and more importantly his frog has beefed up again. 

And from his sole shots you can see how 2 weeks has made a difference in frog and sole health - again no trimming required. 

Its likely that his medio-lateral balance will alter as well over the next few weeks and now that he can begin to work on tougher surfaces he should be able to make lots of changes!