One step forward two steps backwards.

It was so cold today that I could not warm Jazz up in walk as I normally do. Unfortunately, if he is not warmed up, and made to understand that I have control, in walk, then he can be very difficult to get to listen to me. And he was!!!  So we had a bit of a battle for a while until he realised the rules, and then he did some lovely shoulder in in trot, some really good (best ever out in the arena) half pass trot, and some super lengthening and lifting. I hadn't wanted to ride at all but I'm glad I did.

I led Campero out for a walk down the road, but he isn't sound today and I have to conclude that I did too much with him yesterday. He is alternately unsound on the front legs, one sometimes and the other other times. Mostly it's the off fore, which is obviously his worse affected foot. He isn't too bad on rough surfaces and stones, this is definitely the tendons inside his feet. I must have overstressed them. He'll come right again soon I expect, because he is now clearly heel first landing, but his length of toe and huge toe callous (see pictures below) is causing him real problems in breaking over which can't be helping his tendons any.

This is his worst foot. It is 5 inches wide and over 6.5 inches long. The other three are not a lot different. It's not difficult to see that the breakover should be at least a third of the way back off his toe, and the mechanical difficulty that must be giving him in walking properly is pretty huge. But I can't take it off, the white line is right at the front, and the callous is protecting the point of his pedal bone from touching the floor with too thin a sole covering. On the plus side, that's a beautiful frog and a strong heel, which are a huge bonus. And which is also just as well, because his toe is currently causing him to stand with far too much weight rocking backwards into his heels and if they were weak too then we would be in all sorts of trouble!

 Turn your head sideways and you will see what angle his foot was sloping at when I took this shot. I am not holding the hoofpick, it is being held in place by the depth of the toe callous. This is wrong, by the way, if you are not a barefooter. The line from the point of his frog to the end of his foot should be a smooth curve up and out over the white line. He has put up this ridge as a reaction to the fact that the rest of his sole is too thin to protect his pedal bone point from stones. It is, if you like, and emergency bandage, and we will know when he is really progressing with the insulin problems when it starts to disappear and the hoof pick falls to the floor like it should!

Have a look at these two for the new line that his foot will grow in at. He will actually end up with small round Spanish feet, having had flat "thoroughbred" feet all his life.

This one is interesting. You can see the steeper bit which is often present in a shod horse's foot, where it is trying to tell you where it wants to be, before the shoe corrupts the line. But right at the very very top, just where the hair is, is the couple of millimetres that he has grown in the last week, and it is even more steep than the other bit. That toe will, eventually, end a whole one and a half inches further back than it does right now.  By then, he should be sound. Fingers crossed!

C