Ennis' first 3 weeks

Ennis arrived here just over 3 weeks ago, already out of shoes and with quite reasonable looking hooves. He was landing toe first, though, and was short-striding all round.

He has just started to land better, as I posted last week, but I couldn't put his photos up at the time as my stills camera (which admittedly has a hard life constantly under horses'  feet) had finally given up the ghost. Armed with my new one I have now got these shots, which show the subtle but important changes in his feet so far.

His frog still has a lot of development to do but he has better concavity and the start of stronger heels. His medio-lateral balance is still off, which is not surprising at this stage, and that will probably be the biggest change going forward. 

Not much to see from the lateral shots - it will be a few more weeks before any angle change is clearly visible. 

From this angle the better frog and digital cushion development are more obvious. 

Although he had fairly healthy frogs when he arrived his foot was under-running, as you can see from the position of the frog in relation to the heels. 

 

This profile is improving and will allow the back his foot to become stronger and his toe to shorten. 

Lateral shots will be interesting in the next update but don't tell us much at the moment!

This is his less distorted foot and so there are fewer changes but again better frog development which should continue over the next few weeks.