Anyway, here's Dixie's overgrown front feet.
Right front heel shot
Right front solar
Weird profile shot
Left front heel
Left front solar
Left front weird angle
"Are you through YET?"
Thoughts: Her frogs look ratty, but they feel good. Nice and firm, and a pretty open heel bulb. White lines are a little stretched, but considering how long her walls are, it's acceptable. Beautiful concavity, and a good callous at the toe part of the sole.
I like the way you can really see how bars get folded over. Dixie's aren't folded, but they're headed that way. The only place she really has chalky dead sole is at the heels - if I managed to arrange things so that she got more heel stimulation, maybe that wouldn't happen? Anyway, I think it's cool to see the very early stages of an imbalance - makes it easier to spot them on other horses, I think.
As always, feel free to repost these or give comments/criticism. If my horse isn't a wicked horrible bitch tomorrow, I'll get "after" shots and you can see how my (awesome) trimmer deals with her feet.
Hey! Not bad for 7 weeks. Yeah, starting to get a little long, but I think they look pretty darn good. I think that's a testament to the quality of the previous trim job. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteDoes he square off the toes, or does Dixie do that herself, naturally?
ReplyDeleteThe way that she wears away the toes and keeps them from growing is a lot like Peanut. When she sees that, my new trimmer is all about really scouting around in the frog and seeing if there's any hint of thrush hanging out in a far away nook. Sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if treating her central sulcuses and the cleft between her heels would stop that, let her lower her heels, and let them decontract? I had some good results in what appeared to me to be healthy frogs that really showed by the next trim.
*shrug*
ES - she does that herself! He makes her feet into little works of art. They look like mustang feet when he's done. Then she wears her toes off like that - really freaked me out when she first started that last winter.
ReplyDeleteSara, do you think they're still contracted? I guess they're slightly oval but they're so much better than her previous feet...
Our horses frogs are ratty like that to. I've always thought it was because of the rough,rocky, brushy area they live in. Hawk somehow even managed to take a big chuck out of his. We were looking at feet today wondering who said they grow slower in the winter. Don't think these guys got that memo yet! We'll be trimming this weekend...
ReplyDeleteOzzy barely grows any foot. He'll go 8-10 weeks between trims and really just need his flares taken down. He's like... self maintaining.
ReplyDeleteI'm very curious to see what her feet look like after the trim. I see a lot of good things about what your farrier is doing and if you think Dixie's feet are better than they were before, maybe the farrier still has more to fix?
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I did notice, and it could totally be the picture angle (I know how hard it is to get a straight shot when you are holding the hoof and trying to take the pic-LOL)...but the left front solar picture looks like the outside heel is quite a bit forward of the inside heel. That would account for why that extra big hunk of frog is growing there.
Does the farrier trim the excess frog off?
I do believe that her heels are still contracted. To me, the bulges of her heel bulbs still look huddled together, not spread out. In the left front solar picture, I see a sole that looks lovely in shape, but lurking in the back it seems that the heels just get narrower and narrower and almost look pinched where they end. Maybe it's the fact that she has a lot of heel and that is distancing her sole from those heel bulbs, but I definitely see a big difference when I look between those two sections of the foot.
ReplyDeleteTell me if that doesn't make sense. When I get home I can draw up what I mean. It's hard to make myself clear during a 15 minute break. :)
Thanks for posting hoof shots again. I made an observation similar to BE Cowgirls regarding the left front outside heel the last time that you posted hoof shots.
ReplyDeleteMy observation this time is that the rounding she is creating at the toe is centered on the right front and shifted to the outside on the left front.
As her rider, it might be interesting to see if you can feel her using the left front differently than the right.
Trimmer will be here soon, so this is a quick comment - I'll add "after" pics when he's done.
ReplyDeleteI roped my hubby into taking video of her trotting/pacing out a year ago - I think she paddles a bit, which might explain the uneven wear. video
My guy does trim frog, but he doesn't carve it. He peels off just the outer layer of dead stuff. Never leaves her tender.
Val - she probably is uneven. I still haven't had time to schedule regular lessons (and she's such a shit in the arena anyway), and I know I post 90% of the time on the same diagonal. We're slowly getting better, but I'm sure that affects things.
BEC - here's her feet when we first got to Reno. They were SO flat, and she was tender on rocks - she'd been living in a stall in Ohio, with a pasture trim from a horseshoer. Heel, solar, and side. And here's her feet in Jan '08, a month after I got her - I still couldn't pick them up long enough to get a solar shot.
Yes, I did laugh! It has been cold and colder here for the last two weeks. Oh wait. We did have a heat wave - it got up to 20*F. This morning it's -3* when I went out to feed.
ReplyDeleteMy farrier came out Monday. We had to reschedule from the week before because that awful wind pulled the topper off his truck and spewed farrier tools all over the highway. He recovered all of his tools and was grateful the forge, anvil and grinder stayed in the back of the truck.
I didn't take any pictures. This time of year the horses' feet just don't grow much. We have gone as long as 10 weeks with no work and just rasping.
:P it was +36 when I woke up today! I didn't even have to break ice!
ReplyDeleteUgh, the kind of wind that rips a truck topper off is too much. A camper shell, yeah, you were asking for it with that thing - but a truck topper? Yikes.