New kids on the block

There was an influx of new horses last week who have all been patiently waiting to appear on the blog. Having been shunted into second place by the slow motion and RRR footage its finally their turn this week...

First up Indy who made a brief appearance at the RRR where his owner and I had a rendez-vous for him to come home with us last Sunday. 

Indy is an eventer who suffered a DDFT tear in his LF and had a year off. Coming back into work he went lame on his RF, which again blocked to the foot and remedial shoes did not improve him. 

On arrival Indy was landing toe first on all four feet but he is an incredibly cheerful soul who likes nothing better than marching round the tracks looking for like-minded horses to play with so I am hoping to see changes in his landing fairly quickly. 

Next up is Dylan, a TB who has come all the way from Kent. On MRI he was diagnosed with navicular bone damage, pedal osteitis, DDFT and impar ligament damage along with a bone bruise to his LF, the lamest foot. 

 As his lameness has not responded to rest or remedial shoeing Dylan's vet agreed to refer him here. When he arrived he was - as you can see - shod with wedged pads (though he is not to be confused with the first Dillon who came here for rehab, who became known to all and sundry as "Dillon with the wedges"...!).

 The pads effectively completely covered his frog and sole but the central sulcus split he has in both front feet is a sign that all is not well.

 Once the shoes were off these were the rather smelly and contracted feet which met us...

Lots of work to do there, Dylan, but despite all this he has been moving about remarkably comfortably over his first few days and there's no doubt his feet will look very different by the time of his first  update.

Last but not least another eventer - also grey, also Irish but considerably daintier than Indy, her name is Isla.

Isla also has a history of recurrent lameness which blocks to the palmar hoof and which has not responded to rest and treatment. Isla's shoes came off 2 months ago and my first thought when I saw them was that they looked suspiciously symmetrical from the top, though the sole and palmar shots tell a different story.

 They look neat but she is also landing toe first and has a medio-lateral imbalance (worse on the LF) where she lands laterally.

There will be more on all of them soon, of course.