Wednesday 30 September 2020

Valentina's 4 week update

Valentina has been here 4 weeks so its time for an update. She arrived with a very clear toe first landing and a lameness which was worse on her LF. 
Over the last 4 weeks she has started to develop better structure in her palmar hoof but the improvement has been faster on her RF while her LF is still landing toe first. There are signs though that this foot is changing, with slightly better balance and a less under-run heel. 

On her better foot she is looking more upright but her toe is shorter and her landing on this foot is much better than when she arrived. 
Its not uncommon for one foot to improve faster than the other, especially when there is a long term lameness, so we will monitor Valentina over the next couple of weeks and keep working her on easy surfaces in the meantime. 

Valentina's comparison footage is here: https://vimeo.com/463340343





 

Tuesday 22 September 2020

New arrivals - first post feet

 New horses arrived at the weekend, which means horses went home as well, so lots of reports to write and photos and video to process, which I am only slowly getting on top of, so apologies for the delay. 

To try and clear the backlog I am going to post both new horses' photos today so as to have time to post updates on the other horses later in the week. First up is Buddy, who had a long journey from Berkshire but appears none the worse for that. 
He has fairly flat feet and despite being barefoot for a longtime does not have the best landing. By contrast, I saw a shod horse at the weekend with a stinking heel first landing - it just goes to show that hoof health is not just about shoes!
His feet don't look too bad, although there is some weak hoof wall (which will chip as it is weak already) but he has decent enough frogs, despite a slightly long toe.
I'm not worried about the long wall as the tracks will take of that as Buddy ambles about and he will find the gradual change much easier to deal with than a sudden trim. 

Buddy's footage is here: https://vimeo.com/460472871

Next up is Rebel, who also arrived at the weekend. Despite a history of lameness which goes on for many months she is actually landing quite well on her LF, not so well on her RF. 


She is more recently out of shoes and also shows signs of having had poor medio-lateral balance, with the digital cushion looking as if it has loaded unevenly when you look at the palmar hoof (below). 


As with Buddy, there are some good aspects to her feet, that decent landing on one of her feet and her frogs, which don't look too bad even though her heels are a little under-run. 
Rebels' footage is here, and of course we will follow up with updates once there are changes to see: https://vimeo.com/460472701