Bulls and needlework

It didn’t seem fair to school Tia today when she could still be a bit stiff from Sunday, so I took her out for a short hack. She was very good. She’s even improving at that too! Much more relaxed and swinging and working with me. Lovely girl.

Her feet are looking really good. The back ones are increasing their concavity after being very flat. They have a pronounced curve on the front, called a bullnose. I have seen this once before in a horse who had been subclinical laminitic for a while and I believe that it happens when good foot grows on a hoof which has previously been weakly attached to the hoof bones. Do you remember how Tia’s feet used to turn pink after being stressed? Where the laminae tore slightly and released a bit of blood. Basically, a bullnose is “reverse flare”. The top of the hoof is a less steep angle than the bottom, resulting in a very distinct curve to the front edge. They don’t go pink at all any more, so they are now well attached and the new angle is the right one. Her feet will be lovely, and bigger, once that has grown out. The front ones are already bigger and looking very nice indeed, and she seems to be happy over stones and rough surfaces.

I did school Tetley and he went very well. I loose schooled him first, indoors, and he did not look very unsound at all, perhaps just a bit short on both hinds equally. He was fine to ride, although he ground his teeth a bit in trot on the right rein, and was clearly less happy on the right. So we didn’t do too much. This is a change, previously he has been less happy to the left. On the left today, he did some fantastic trot/halt/trot - quite the best he has ever done. And on both reins he did what seemed to me to be a perfect walk pirouette. He’s now so reponsive to the aids that I can do straight/shoulder-in/straight/travers/ straight in the distance of 80 feet, the length I can get in the barn when you take off the space you need to turn the corners. Pace it out and you’ll see how sharp off the aids a horse needs to be to get that – never mind one that’s a huge 17.1 in size :- )

Caddy had the day off and I tidied up his front feet, one of which had flared a lot. The cut on his shoulder has grown hair (it didn’t until I put cornucrescine on it) and it is going to be just a very faint line. I’m glad I paid for the stitching, which was medically unnecessary, because the cosmetic result is as good as I had hoped that it would be. Do you know, though, that he is still reluctant to go anywhere near the corner of the yard where the stitching was done? I have to bribe him with food and even then he's not keen – what a memory, he was sedated to the eyeballs at the time!

C