Hopeful ....

I am hopeful of a number of things today. The first is that the truly despicable weather of yesterday and this morning will continue to abate and let me get out and ride a horse this afternoon. I was busy with family stuff yesterday but there would have been no riding anyway, it was a completely foul day.

Hope number two is that Radar is almost sound, maybe completely sound. He was better yesterday thanthe day before and there seemed to be a whiff of something on the hoofpick on Thursday as I went down one side of his frog. The bottom of the collateral groove also crumbled away, leaving it deeper and more solid at the bottom than it has been in the past. There was a definite whiff today, I cleaned the pick off between the two sides and it was pretty obvious.

So he may simply have shed a piece of rotten foot that he doesn't need now his feet are coming up into such a great shape. When I bought him his heels were collapsed outwards and his bars were completely laid over, covering his heel area to the edge of the sole. (Tetley's were like this too when his shoes first came off). He now has proper bars with a little sharp ridge on the top.

What we do know about Radar now is that his legs have a propensity to fill at the slightest excuse. That's useful to know because it means that I won't panic about the back one that has a windgall or minor future filling. He may also be a bit of a wimp, because he was terribly lame if there wasn't even enough wrong to blow an identifiable hole in his frog. (I'd rather he was a wimp than a stoic. Stoic horses can get into all sorts of trouble before they let on - can't they Tetley?) On the other hand it may still be brewing .... watch this space.

C

ps I went trawling back in time - when Jazz had whiffy hoofpick syndrome sometime last year and a filled leg, it didn't blow as an abcess through the heel, it stopped at breaking out through the side of the frog - let's hope Radar's does the same.