Big Barefoot Bryan and Sweet Georgia Brown

BBB arrived here just over 4 weeks ago, already out of shoes and with a diagnosis of collateral ligament damage in his LF. 

Here is the troublesome foot on arrival - not bad, but a bit flat and featureless and with a relatively weak frog and slightly under-run heels. Below is the same foot 4 weeks later - improving but with a long way to go before the heels are in the right place and medio-lateral balance is correct. 

His digital cushion and frog have started to improve and work harder; though he isn't yet strong enough to land heel first on a tough surface with this foot, I don't expect it to take him much longer to establish this consistently.

For completeness, here are his lateral shots.  Its nice to see that the nail-holes are growing down even though Bryan isn't in full work yet.

Ironically, its not his front feet which have slowed down his workload so far but his left hind, which may have had a long-standing issue which has been flushed out by him coming out of shoes.  In any event, his owner recalls that he always rested this foot and after he had been moving around the tracks for a while he went quite short on it and blew an abscess at his coronary band at the toe, which in my experience is very unusual. I'm glad to say that he is feeling a lot better and I'm hoping that will be the end of that particular saga, but as you can see in the footage below, he is still off on that leg on a circle.  We only filmed him for a short time, and will avoid tight corners until he is sound on it.



Georgia has also been here just over 4 weeks and - like Bryan - has hind limb as well as front limb problems.  In her case she has DDFT damage to her RF and collateral ligament damage in her LF as well as fibrocartilage damage to the navicular bone.  She has also got an old injury to her extensor tendon on her RH.



When we first filmed Georgia on a circle one of the most noticeable problems, as well as the obvious unlevelness, was the rigidity of her head and neck, which bobbed with each step.  She was very tense and hollow, rushing and lacking any suspension in trot.  While she has a long way to go, she is just beginning to move in a more fluid way.