Dali is our most recent arrival, a KWPN who has come from the opposite corner of the UK - the far north east - all the way to us in the south west.
For those of you abroad who know that England is a relatively tiny place and think this is no big deal, let me just share with you that fuel prices are running at more than £1.40/litre - or about $8.20 per US gallon for those of you in Texas - so getting from one corner of England to the other is a major economic undertaking...
Kudos to Rachael, Dali's owner, who has made a huge effort to bring Dali down here and who has ploughed massive amounts of time, energy and passion into his rehabilitation already. His hooves need a lot of work, but I know she has already made enormous progress in turning him into the affectionate and sociable horse he is today.
Dali has pretty much everything going on, according to his MRI report - DDFT, collateral and impar ligaments all have areas of damage, along with the navicular bone and fibrocartilage damage. The problems are bilateral, but what is particularly evident with Dali's hooves at the moment is that left and right are very different. The top photo is his RF - more underrun, longer toe - the lower his LF - boxier and more upright.
Both feet of course have some major event lines and some obvious bruising but those are "past history" and not something I am unduly worried about at the moment. The differences are as dramatic from the front - if anything the RF appears to have slightly better medio-lateral balance but its by far his lamest leg.
The LF appears more unbalanced and distorted and you can see simply from this view of the hoof that collateral ligament damage is likely (as was shown on MRI). However, as you all already know, hooves are incredibly dynamic, so I am hoping that Dali will start rapidly changing his foot balance over the next few weeks.
Finally, I couldn't resist including another Dali - and until I looked at this last night I hadn't realised that Salvador was making his own comment on remedial farriery...
3 comments:
Wow that Salvador Dali piece is very relevant!
Great post, looking forward to following Dali's progress
words cannot describe how much thats just blown my mind! Cant believe theyre THAT different...I found myself thinking the first two pics were of a front and back foot as did everyone else at home! and lol yes if only he'd done a barefoot painting afterwards with hooves balancing that horses conformation! lol x
The more I look at the Salvador Dali the more astonished I am - it really is incredible!
Rachael - glad you like the pics :-) Don't worry - hooves look very different when you take the shots from ground level, and with a bit of luck Dali's next updates will look better :-)
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