Dixie Summer 2013 Hoof Post

I've been really working hard (or at least working often) on Dixie's feet and they look amazing.  Here's some before pics, from the end of April.

Too much toe, too much heel, too much everything.

And here they are in mid-August, heels as wide as I've ever seen them.  I could probably take more off the toe, still, but it's easier for me to just go at them once a week and keep them looking exactly like this.  I trimmed, then rode 10 miles bare, then hosed her off and finally at the last minute remembered to take pics.

This one looks awesome - front left.

 This one is still stretched.  Too much heel probably.  Front right.

 Right again.

 Right and left.  Left and right?  Words is hard.

Hoof improvement

Let's recap! Here's how nasty Dixie's hooves looked a week ago, when the packed-in sole came out:



On Tuesday, I trimmed.





By Thursday, her heels were opening up.


And today, they look really nice. I could take the heels down a bit more, but her frogs look way better - the deep black crevices on either side of the frog have filled in.





Yay!

The white things you see in a few of the pics are teeny-weeny gauze squares, dipped in tea tree oil, crammed in the cracks of her frogs. I've been picking her feet out every day or every other day and replacing the gauze. If she wasn't in such a barefoot-unfriendly situation - in a tiny paddock, bedded with shavings - I might not worry about it. But the thing is, when I put her feet down and walk away, she waits like 3.4 seconds before she goes and stands in poop. I think the tea tree gauze is a physical barrier that keeps the manure out of her frogs and gives them time to heal.

Gotta go ride tomorrow. We're doing the 25 on Saturday at Ride Bear - she should be just fine, but we need to get out and blow the cobwebs off.

The ugly

One of the things I try hard to do is share the fuckups, disappointments, accidents, etc. in my horse life. When my shit goes wrong and I think "god maybe I shouldn't blog this," that's when I make sure to blog it. So, first, please click through (if you're looking at this in Reader) and watch this video.


Dixie trotting, Sept 2012 from Funder on Vimeo.

Man, that is a fine moving horse. Unfortunately she's, like, the polar opposite of how a gaited horse should move! No flashy high action, just a real businesslike smooth easy trot. So already I'm kinda cringing - look, look at my amazing TWH endurance horse's super efficient trot. You're doin' it wrong, Funder.

(She's still so skinny. Gotta get those ribs covered - but it's only been a week of the Fat Camp plan.)

So I've watched the clip over and over, in slow motion even, and that mare is absolutely landing flat/heel-first. She's not toeing it at all. She's just flowing along perfectly.

And look at this hoof! It's a little long, yeah, and a little underrun at the heels, but that's a fine looking hoof.


Earlier this week, Tuesday or Wednesday, I checked on Miss D and that sole was looking like it was maybe ready to come out. Then I was laid very low indeed by some minor food poisoning and I wasn't able to get back out til this weekend. On Saturday I arose from my deathbed and went and shot that video - plus picked up Dixie's feet and had a look-see.

The packed-in sole was definitely ready to come out, and her frogs were absolutely eaten up by thrush. I don't know how much you can see from these shots, but here goes...





That was midway through the prying session. I got some more sole and bar out of all four feet, but I only took those shots. Then I scrubbed purple thrush stuff all up in her feet. This is a terrible photograph, but I think you can see how deep the crevices are.



Today I went back and packed those crevices with tea tree oil gauze.



Now that the sole is coming out, her heels are hugely long.



This is the bit where you might disagree with me: I'm leaving the walls alone for a couple days. My first instinct was to scrape out the crumbly sole, treat the thrush, and trim to live sole as normal, but I'm going to wait. I kinda think that the walls are protecting her poor frogs. I know they need to get back to ground contact and start doing their job, but I also think it's a good idea to let them heal up for a short time first.

Also, I think that my horse has no nerves in her feet or something.

***

You remember my sweet tack trunk I made out of a vertical tool chest from Home Depot? Yeah, it didn't work out so well. I mean, it worked fine on perfectly flat indoor surfaces, but it was almost impossible to accordion open the chest on bumpy outdoor ground. It's been demoted to living in the garage holding "stuff I might one day need," and I'm trying something new for in-trailer storage.

It's another tool chest from Home Depot - this one is like a trunk, with a telescoping handle, wheels, and a lift-off lid. Fits in the back under the saddle rack.


Holds the "I might need this on the road" stuff.


BIG removable top tray comfortably holds all my trimming junk.


Mr. September's a big handsome fellow, but his human appears to have misplaced his clothes!


And finally, I stole a couple of Tahoe Rim ribbons ;)

Quickie

I'm taking a break from packing to circle back around to feet, then tomorrow I'm off to the Tahoe Rim endurance ride. Yippie, friends and the best scenery in the world!

So Sunday I got some CA Trace and two new hoof knives, and Monday I went back to the barn. I put Dixie's boots on and got her feet wet and let them soak while she ate her mash, then I started worrying at her feet again.

But I stopped. It just did not feel like the right thing to be doing. That sole is NOT coming out, even when it's wet, even with brand-new freshly sharpened knives. And she's still landing flat / heel first, not toe-first. I rolled her toes back to keep the breakover back, got her heels as low as they'll go, scrubbed that good purple thrush stuff up in her frogs, and called it a day.

I just felt like the risk of doing too much was too high. Dixie's not uncomfortable; she moves freely and her feet land correctly. We'll see if the extra copper in the CA Trace helps her, and I know the purple stuff helps. And when that sole starts to come loose, I'll pry it on out. (It's coming out of her back hooves pretty nicely and I did get them looking good!)

This is such a First World Problem but do you brown horse people understand how hard it is to have a mostly-white beast? Especially one with that Pusher roaning on her few dark spots?! She always looks 10x filthier than everybody else's horses. I can't see white spots on her back from poor saddle fit (a mixed blessing, I know). I can't even look at her coat and play "guess the mineral imbalance"!

Hopefully we'll finish out our 2012 season at the Redneck Ride on October 27. There's some huge fires roaring along up there - hopefully no homes or trails are burning! But anyway, of course any ride near Halloween has to be a costume ride, so I'm trying to decide what to do. Should we go as a My Little Pony again? Any other suggestions?

House decorating, yet more hooves

Over the weekend we found homes for some of our art.

The dragon:


The unrealistically clean Dixie:


A birdhouse:


Etc.

Then today, the photos of me and Dixie from that photoshoot back in March arrived. Wait, that sounds wrong - we actually ordered them over the weekend, and they arrived very promptly - not that we've been waiting since March.


It's printed museum wrapped on canvas, so framing is optional.


We got the "I can ride!" picture printed too, as a paper print.


I finally came up with a plan for framing my fish ... uh... appliques? Quilted cutout things? I've never seen anything like them and I'm not sure how to describe them - the person I got them from said they were from some village in Central America.


I stretched the white background fabric on foamcore board, then tacked the fish piece on top - that way it stays 3D, and the edges are still visible.


Anyway, I've had them for almost 10 years, and I'm glad I'm finally doing something other than pushpinning them to the wall.


Here's Banders, as a visual palate cleanser. He is snoozing in one of those crinkly collapsible cat Slinky tunnels.



Monday I went out to see my horse. I wanted to ride my horse, but it was not to be. It was raining, and she'd been rolling.


She was quite serious about grinding the mud in to her right side.


"What are you looking at?"


Alas, I had to switch to my backup plan of staring at her feet.

Here's the front left - the thick false sole has pretty much shed out, but somehow over the weekend she sliced off the tip of her frog, too. She wasn't tender at all!




And here's the front right, which hadn't exfoliated ANY of the sole.




Somehow, with my amazingly dull knives and my quite sharp nippers, I managed to unjam the bars a bit.





With any kind of luck, the sole will be cleaner tomorrow...

As you can no doubt guess from the last two pictures, by then Dixie was having none of this stupid photograph-her-feet game. We had a big fight in the wash rack, then I did some ground work for about 45 minutes - getting her to lead nicely on the inside and the outside of circles. Once I finally got a nice inside turn at the walk, we called it quits. I let her graze, and took her over to stare at the Farm Animals. Between Dixie's pasture and the rest of the ranch, there's a paddock with two short, hairy, horned goats, and a paddock with a creepy looking alpaca and the world's most obese steer. Dixie's led past them pretty well for several weeks, but I hadn't let her really gawk at them before. She seemed to enjoy snorting at them.

Hoof nerds

Check out Christoph's post about false sole!

All I have to add is that he's way better at knife sharpening or something, because I couldn't begin to cut Dixie's out.

Almaden Quicksilver: no mojo

I do not know what the deal is. I am still so uninspired to blog, or to comment on my friends' blogs, or much of anything really. Apparently I'm still decompressing or something.

Anyway, on Thursday I went down to San Jose to Almaden Quicksilver park. Very cool info in that link. It was a mercury mine for over a century. There's an endurance ride held there, which is why I went - there had to be enough trail to make it worth the trip.



tl;dr: It was ungodly hot and Dixie got footy.

It was a pretty hilly ride, with a good steep climb immediately. This is about 5 minutes in, looking down at my rig.


SJ is disgusting and smoggy and you can't even SEE the bay. I decided it's spooky and unnatural to see the curve of the earth for the horizon. It is right and proper to see mountains at the horizon. It is acceptable to see ocean. Smoggy land horizon? Wrong.


There was a lot of boring mining road, with really pleasant little singletrack side trails through the woods.


And a lot of very cool mining ruins.


Really pretty place.


So we made it 5 miles out and Dixie said she was through trotting on the rocks. I turned her around and we went back to the trailer at a nice swingy walk. She was sound, no harm done, but she was clearly not comfortable trotting on rocks any more that day.

When we got back to about a mile from the trailer, I hopped off and walked her in. It was hot. It was SO GODDAMN HOT. I haven't been that hot since I 'bout got heatstroke doing nothing at all at Tevis '10. So gross. Humidity is so disgusting. Also it was a 35 degree F swing from our maritime-climate house (59 when I left/got home) to stupid hot smoggy SJ (94 disgusting degrees). This was what I thought of it:



Dixie sweated a lot, but she was aiight, really. She'd have done better with sponging, but I didn't know if there was water out there (there are troughs at a couple of spots that I found).


So after we got back to the trailer and I drank all the rest of the water and had a snack, I trimmed her hooves.

Hoof nerd digression

We headed out barefoot because I couldn't decide what to do about her feet. There's obviously a ton of false sole that's trying to come out, but I couldn't chip it out and I couldn't tell how thick it was and I just couldn't decide how to trim.

Hoof recap (all front right)
Here's immediately upon arrival in CA:


After Tuesday's ride (don't mind the rock, I did get it out)


And that's where I was on Thursday. Obviously that's false sole and it's getting ready to come out, but it was not budging. The best thing I could think to do was ride on hard ground, so that's what I did.

Here's post-ride (and post-prying and trimming)


In person, you could really see the huge chunks of sole that came out - they were at least 1/4" thick. Hard to get pictures that showed it though.


Anyway, now that I finally feel like I know where live sole is, I trimmed her walls down to that level. I pried out what sole I could with my nippers. I'm still wildly unsure about what's going on, but I think her feet are doing ok?


BEFORE side view:


They're definitely shorter!


I know there's tons of white line separation from the sole view, but I think that's normal considering all that sole is trying to exfoliate. She sure doesn't have flaring. Her walls are still like half an inch thick. I think I'd be happy if her heels came down a bit more, and I think they might if that sole finally comes out. I don't see any metabolic problems / event lines. The little hump at the coronet band should smooth out when the sole cracks out and I can actually trim the bars.


Oh! And I encountered a local endurance rider and was rather underwhelmed. She was leading her spotted horse down the mountain as I was riding up. All matching biothane tack, carrying her helmet, leading her horse down a big hill - I asked if she was an endurance rider, and said I was also an endurance rider who'd just moved to the area. And she said there were lots of e-riders out here, and had I signed up with the AERC website? I was like "I'm from Reno, I just haven't done any Bay Area rides" and she was like "oh ok."

Yall.

I was wearing NEON SMILEY TIGHTS, a neon blue long sleeve running shirt, and a helmet. I was riding a horse geared out entirely in biothane, with enormous matching pommel bags. And she asked if I'd joined AERC? Would anyone really dress this idiotically if she hadn't already committed to the sport? REALLY?