Progress!

The 25th was a "big trim" day for Wisky. That's how I think of a trim where I feel I've made a huge amount of progress. The hoof is ready, it seems, to let go of damaged material and allow the true inner hoof to begin emerging.

This trim, I was able to remove a lot of material from Wisky's front hooves. And her hinds had exfoliated plenty of sole material, so her walls were ready to come down. There isn't much more to do on Wisky's hinds than regular maintance trims from this point, but her fronts are the big story.



I trimmed her hinds first, then her fronts. I worked for nearly two hours just on this trim.

This is her uninjured front foot. Most the work I've been able to do on her overgrown front feet had to be done with an angle grinder. Rasping would have required much more time and sweating.

This is the hoof that she injured originally as well as the next shot. The injured hoof is taking longer to release necrotic material, but all we can do is trim what is allowed and wait for her hoof to offer more. That's the least invasive way to repair damaged hooves. But still, we have to know what we can take and what we must leave, and that comes with experience reading the hooves.


You can see the scar above her coronet band here.
You can also see the stretched dead laminae. A typical view in a case like this where the walls were allowed to grow at will and no corrective trmming was done in the past.

This trim left one front hoof smaller than the other as I was able to take more material from the uninjured hoof. She was rebooted after this trim in two different types of boots. I used the Easycare Glove on the uninjured foot and the Soft Ride Comfort boot on her injured foot.

Here she is right after our work together, relaxing in the playfield. The grass in this field is playground grass. Tough stuff and challenging for a horse to eat. My horses don't care for it much and just nibble here and there. That's all Wisky does. It gives her something to do and a reason to keep moving, but not much green grass is digested in this field.

Update: Wisky has been barefoot for the past two days and no meds for pain. She's been strolling around gingerly, but last night when I went out to toss hay to her, she was out in the middle of the field and I called her over. She came trucking across the field at a good clip. Favoring her injured leg just slightly. What a thrilling sight that was to see.

We have a ways to go, but the little steps in a case like this are so exciting. I have 3 weeks left to get her ready to go home. Her hoof care will be taken over by another natural hoofcare trimmer in her area. It will be sad to see her go, but I look forward to the updates on her progress.

Go Wisky!!

Hope!

I tried to get a picture of what I caught Wisky doing today, But I was too late and too far away.

She was running and trotting around the field! When her tail comes up and she floats around at a canter, she is a real beauty, you'll just have to take my word for it for now.

I wish I could have gotten a video of moving and will try harder next time. All I caught was a flipping tail after she came to a stop. She had just been running the length of this fence! Yes, that's Spencer walking over to chat with her. He really likes her. I guess he has a thing for slender gals. That counts me out.

How good it feels to email or call the owners of horses like Wisky to give them news like this. It doesn't mean she is out of the woods yet, not even close, but it is a big sign of hope. She hasn't been on pain meds for days!

At the end of a long and tiring day, I took this picture of the sunset over the horses' behinds. It just reminded me that there is always hope.

Gloved and Ready to Fight

Here is a product I recently added to my arsenal to help horses in Wisky's condition fight to get their painfree hooves back. It's a great softening agent that makes trimming easier and it pads their frogs. It's simply pine tar and iodine and the texture is like thick, gummy, dough.

So Wisky wore the Soft Ride Comfort Boots for about 2 weeks. I like that you can leave those boots on for an extended period without worry of rubbing, normally, as long as the boot is not small for the hoof.

Then for a few days I just filled her hoof with the Hawthorne Sole Pack and let her go bare. I've stopped the bute for a few days to see where her pain level is and it seemed to be about at 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. She will walk over gravel for hay, but thinks twice about walking over gravel for water.

Here are a couple quick videos that I took of Wisky after she had been barefoot for a few days and soles packed with Sole Pack. I took these after I had just cleaned the Sole Pack out of her hooves. The pain meds had also left her system by this time. I spend lots of time evaluating her with and without pain meds, with and without boots and this is the worst she's been since arriving.



Again, this was just after I clean the Sole Pack from her hooves. Before, she was walking on the gravel, although painfully. Here she was considering taking a few steps toward the water, but just could not do it. The length of these videos was a long as I left her in this situation. Which I mention only so you know I'm not into watching horses suffer. I just need to gauge where horses are as far as pain level to determine if they are improving or going backwards.

I'm trying something different!


After these videos were taken, I repacked her hoof with Sole Guard, and put the Easycare Inc., Glove Boots on her. A boot that doesn't have as much padding, but she can navigate in without the weight of the Soft rides. The Sole Pack not only cushioning the bottoms of her feet, it is a healing agent. And I believe I can leave these boots on for extended periods. She was still walking gingerly afterwards, but she was walking.

She is also standing more square in this situation than she has before.


Wisky frogs were rotted and thrushy when I removed her plastic shoes, and this sole pack has helped. The problem with the Vettec CS (Copper Sulfate) that is generally used to pack the natural balance shoes that we see on many of these horses in her condition is that the Vettec CS literally rots the frog and surrounding sole. At least, that's what I see when I pull those shoes. The frog turned to a powdery residue that flakes off exposing the inner frog. So I don't believe Copper Sulphate is the answer to thrush.

So today, I cleaned and re-packed her hooves and put a pair of size 2 Easycare Gloves on her, her pain level seemed to drop to about a 4. She's pretty happy. These lightweight boots which help her move a bit more normally.

I'll see where she's at tomorrow with them and will be watching closely for rubbing. She is starting on her second month here. I have only a four more weeks to determine if there is any chance we can pull her out of the future.

Her owner lives too far away for me to travel to, but I found a competent trimmer in her area to take over her care.

I checked her hinds today also and she has sloughed a good deal of sole which has left her walls and bars high.

When I look at Wisky, I wonder if she is older than her owner thinks she is. He said she's always been a thin horse, but when you look under her tail, she is sunken, like horses that have been extremely underfed.

Her teeth need to be floated. But spending hundreds on a horse that may not make it, is something that must be condidered. If it appears that we can pull her through this, then I would highly recommend a dental. On the flip side, it would be less of a challenge to get her through this situation if her teeth were working properly.

She seems to be eating well for now. So the dental is a consideration we'll just have to put on the back burner until we can make a better determination regarding her future.

Stay tuned for the results.

Today

We worked on Wisky today. These are not very good pictures, but it was getting late and I was excited and wanted upload a post about her progress.



Today, we made some real progress. She is on soft ground and moves okay on it for a horse in her condition. I wanted her feet to get some moisture, the boots keep them dry.



So she's not wearing boots at this time, but I gave her some bute. She has to walk on gravel to get to water and shelter, but even without the boots and pain meds, that doesn't keep her off the gravel.



If you go back to the earlier posts and compare her feet to these pictures...well, I'm pretty happy with what we've been able to do so far. I just wish she would gain some weight! She's only Eleven, but her body looks much older. I think, once we can determin that her feet are out of the woods, she needs a dental! Iwish that was something we could just have done, but it's expensive and I feel I would need to justify it to the owner, by showing him real pregress on her hooves. That I understand.



The day I removed the shoes, I was only able to trim one foot. Her left front, the worst one of the two. So this was the first trim for right foot.

Tomorrow I'll check on her and possibly put the boots back on to keep her comfortable. She has lost a bit of weight, I believe and probably from so much more movement than she's gotten in awhile. I treated her for some itching she's been doing also. I hope that helps. She has a rain sheet on as we had thunder showers today.

She sure is a sweet mare to work on. Her legs as well as her feet hurt and she still tries pretty hard to cooperate. She's not afraid of much of anything either and that's key to helping her as we used the angle grinder on this trim. That was our saving grace as she couldn't hold her foot up very long at a time.