Sara, the mad scientist!

First, I have found my match with my list of "will not"s!  The poster known as One Red Horse has the same list that I do.  :)  By the way, in case you didn't see my comments, shoes are a definite will not in my book.  I whole-heartedly agree with you!

Anyway, back to the lab.

I am using Peanut as a bit of a guinea pig.  First, let me preface this with the fact that I know that what I am using on him has been shown to be highly toxic to dogs and cats, but that is due to injestion.  With that in mind, I have decided to see what would happen if I combing Peanut with:

Tea tree oil.

I originally pulled it out to put on the backs of his heels, in the little cup between his bulbs, in order to combat those pesky scratches.  It worked!  In a few days after one treatment, the skin was smooth and soft, with all traces gone (granted, it wasn't bad at all, just some traces of scabs).  However, the skin had peeled off, and the edges of peels were quite apparent all around the heel bulb area.  If those peels weren't there, you never would have known that there was anything different between the skin on the heels and the rest of his leg.  It didn't seem to irritate him, and I could fiddle with the peels all I wanted without a reaction from Peanut, but I still didn't like it.

When Dawn came to trim on Sunday, we discussed it (she is also trying some new things on her horse), and she said that scratches kills the skin, so it could very well be as simple as the dead skin coming off.

I still don't like it, but I shared my results with another boarder whose horse has worse scratches.  I showed her Peanut's feet and what happened, but she still thought that it would be worth a try.

Of all the white-footed horses there, Peanut seems to have the easiest time with scratches.  I wonder if it has to do with the fact that he is the only barefoot white-legged horse, which means that he probably has better circulation in his feet.  Plus, his heels are hella wide, much wider than the other afflicted horses.  So, he doesn't have the plumber's crack to trap the nasties in.

One side benefit of applying the oil to his heels was that it would pour down and cover his frogs as well.  Can't complain about anything anti-fungal coming in contact with frogs.

I also tried pouring it into the big cracks that have appeared on the fronts of his fronts.  They are most likely a result of the wet summer and high sugar grass that never left, but I still want to get rid of them.

While I think that I won't use it anymore on his heels, I will still pour it down the cracks in his feet, and maybe into any frog crevice.  They are all places where Peanut doesn't lick.

In the past month, Dawn has started putting tea tree oil on her horse's feet as well to deal with cracks.  I had brought up the idea at our last trim, and so we'll see how our results compare.

One thing that Dawn did bring up was White Lightning Gel.  She has had tremendous success with fighting scratches with the gel.  I'll have to see if I can find some (she recommended farm supply stores more than tack stores), and see if my horse can go scratches-free from here on out.  :)