I got it wrong! 2 weeks of change

Nicky, the smallest rehab to date - a pretty little QH mare - has been here 2 weeks now, and Taz - the biggest rehab to date - a strapping 17.2hh ex-showjumper - has been here10 days.    Thats not long in the scheme of things and I wasn't planning to put up photo updates of them till later in the week.

In fact, if you'd asked me, I would have said their feet hadn't yet gone through much change but then I got my camera out and realised I was completely wrong!  Compare Taz's LF on arrival with how it looks today, below.

The toe is shorter, he has a new angle of growth and the nail holes from his shoes are already growing out and lower in the hoof.   He has NOT been trimmed!

Contrasting his RF in shoes with today, its clear that he is now begining to load his frogs and develop his caudal hoof.  Its too early for Taz to be working on hard surfaces but he is enjoying mooching about on the tracks with his pals and being out in the fields overnight. 

With Nicky, who arrived already barefoot but had long term lameness issues, the changes are ironically no less radical.

Again, her toe is shortening and she is beginning to grow a hoof capsule at a better angle.  Her heels are becoming more supportive as well - but no trimming has been done at all.

One of the most dramatic changes will be in her medio-lateral balance.  Now that she can load her hoof caudally there is a fairly clear shift in balance taking place.   The photo below shows her the day she arrived - frog is OK but her heels are high and she is landing toe first and not engaging the back third of the foot. 

In the photo below - the same foot today - you can see that the loading of the hoof has changed and the back third is working harder now - this is a good thing as it will start to take the strain off the DDFT and collateral and impar ligaments, which in Nicky's case were shown to be injured when she had an MRI in 2009 and have probably been aggravated regularly since then.

In the final shot of Nicky's hooves, you can just see the new angle of hoof growth and that  - once the new hoof capsule has fully grown in - she will have a hoof which gives much more medial support.