Sea Change
There has been a sea change in Campero in the last two days. He is so much more confident standing on his feet that you can see it in his whole body and in the relaxation on his face. He has suddenly stopped stiffening up over night and is feeling stones less and less. He has shed the end half inch on the point of both front frogs, and there is firm sole underneath. He's also peeling off a top layer of sole. I would normally expect that to chalk up, not peel, so I am guessing that Nikki used something to try to harden his soles and that this "skin" is the result. The sole underneath is an order of magnitude harder. The soft spots he used to have are much, much firmer.
His hoof wall is incredibly tough. I can't cut it, I can only rasp it, so his feet are going to be proper little rocks on the end of his feet. The nail holes are all gone and he has about 3/4 inch of new growth at the top. In a few weeks this will mean that his whole heel is strong new foot, and at that point I expect another step up in performance. The biggest change today was that he has, overnight, changed his foot landing to a toe-flick. You can now see the tip of his foot flick upwards as his heel goes to the floor. This is fantastic progress. I don't rule out him taking a few backward steps in the next few weeks, but the forward progress is now enough to make me very confident that we have a resolution for his problems.
I booted him up in front for a ride today to protect the hole in his frog, and he was bouncing along. He isn't the most forward going horse in the world, more like Jazz than Radar, but he certainly felt happy. We met a tractor with a big trailer on it that he was afraid of, but behaved quite well. He piaffed while I talked to the postie :-))) I'm sure that if I take him out to look at the big stuff on the main road that he will soon be traffic proof, because he is a gentle, trusting soul.
I have been too busy trying to sort out the aftermath of the theft of our car to do anything with anyone else. I can't wait for life just to return to normal .....
C
posted by cptrayes @ 5:54 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Nope, he's not had anything put on to harden his soles. He's only ever had the tea tree stuff when there was an icky smelly bit of frog. His sister's feet have those weird radius lines as well - they were very apparent when we got back from the beach this afternoon. Weird. Her feet are so very concave and never peel sole so I am wondering what's going to happen there....
He was born scared of traffic - I don't know why - he just was. None of the others are, his mum you could have ridden down the M6, and Maya bops along happily through main road traffic even as a youngster and without a nanny. Campero has never got completely used to it. The more hacking you do, the better he gets, but then given a break you find his demons return...
XX
Blimey. If you didn't harden up his soles with something like Keratex, then this "skin" is his old sole, which is a really peculiar texture, not like normal sole at all. I wonder what it IS !!??
Tetley was naturally scared of traffic too. Some just are, I wonder why. He used to shake as a car passed, and yet I broke him in and there was no reason for it.
C
I'm glad Campero is feeling better. I am sure he is enjoying all the attention and even the rides---despite the traffic. I hope you can get him over some of his fears so he learns to have fun the whole time he is out.
Never owned any Keratex, honest! Horrid stuff.
Great news about his feet! Hope traffic becomes less scary with time!
There's no problem with Keratex Nikki - if you want to pickle cows in it and sell them for half a million a la Damian Hirst - it's pretty much just formaldehyde!
He's afraid Danni/Jean, but he also does what he's told, so it's no problem.
C.
Nice stuff, 3/4" in 4 weeks is very fast growth though, no wonder he's feeling better if they're changing that fast. My mare is out hacking now leaving her foal at home quite happily, she feels like she's on springs her feet seem so good right now, I wish I could have a dry lot to keep her in all summer :(
Cheers Tracey B
well it's up and down, this game, as you know Tracey. While he is ace, stiffness and turning wise, today he is sensitive on stones in all four feet. That is, hopefully, just a reaction to the work he has been doing, and not the fact that I have started to feed him oats.....
We'll see!
C
Not to change the subject...exactly...but are you getting a new car? I suppose the insurance will just cover the cost of a used car. It's always the victim who ends up suffering more than a fair share in cases like this.
Hope it all works out at least as well as Campero has.
Oats? Where did that come from, I thought he was on a diet...
Tracey B
He can't eat haylage alone if he's working hills Tracey, it's very hard work and he sweats even in walk. He has lost a nice bit of weight. His ribs aren't visible, but you can feel them, and increasing work without feeding him a little corn will cause him too much weight loss.
I also need to start testing what he can and can't eat, whether his intolerance is to grass alone, as Scooby's was, or if there is a hard food problem too.
He's only middling footie this morning, I think I simply did too much work, but the problem with doing one with IR is that we have to work out what is causing what. I can see why Nic doesn't take them as paying guests for her rehab program.
On the smilie side, he is sound on a flat road even when turned in a tight circle. The navicular is well under control.
C
Ah, I see. You're much kinder than me ;) When mine are on a diet, they're on a diet!! I was doing a bit of interval training this morning on my mare and I can finally see the baby weight starting to shift now, she's not getting any corn until October now!!
I hope its not the oats, but if it is, you'll find out soon enough and put it in the memory bank. Doing this as a business is hard, but once you work out the winning forumla is fine tuned then Nic will perhaps be more inclined to have a go eh?
My other mare who has excellent feet had appeared footy recently over stony ground. Nothing had changed and I was really scratching my head. I have since found that her saddle was pinching her and now I've resolved that, she's bombing over the stony ground again.....strange, but what I've learnt is that pinching saddles feels like footiness to the rider (or at least to me anyway).
Onwards :)
Tracey B
I'm not trying to be kind Tracey, not my style :-)) I'm trying to get a handle on what kind of home I have to find for him when he leaves!
C
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