Decisions

I have decided to try my hand at this owner/trimmer thing.  If I could trim Mona and do a respectable job, then Peanut would be simple.

Dawn is coming on Saturday.  I will have everything but Peanut's heels done when she arrives, which makes me think that I should do a pre-trim now so that I am not rushing when Dawn gets here.  I don't want to take off too much height while I leave heels alone, but there is a lot of wall at the toe that needs addressing.  I'm on my own after this, and she'll check him when she comes for Gene. 

His feet are doing interesting things.  In the last 2 years, they seemed to be moving towards oval with the heels starting to move together.  Most worrisome.  At the trim before last, Dawn noted how very far back his toe callus was on his sole and gave him a severe trim that took off a lot of wall.  He was a little unhappy when I walked him on pavement a few days later, but ok on grass.

The amazing thing was that his foot popped back to circular.  Well, at least his sole did.  His wall at the toe is far thicker than it was before - which is so weird.  It's normal thickness at the quarters, then fattens up at the toe to kinda keep the old shape of his foot.

When I realized what I was looking at, I thought "and I get to trim that huge thing..."  Well, no worries, I'll attack it during the week and roll it, then give him a full everything-but-heels trim before Dawn arrives.

I am thrilled at how damn circular his sole is at the toe.  That was a very weird development.  I gotta take pictures before I take it off.

In other news, I've been riding and hiking.  The riding isn't really news-worthy - it's going well.  I'm finding that I feel like I'm the one walking down the trail, just very high up, and then I realize that's because we've meshed.  Nice.  There's still one hill where speed scares me.  I think I need to go out with Anne-Marie and let him have his way with it just to prove to me that nothing's going to happen.

His new thing is a desire to jog down hills.  During our last ride, I was yanking him back hard on a very steep, very rocky downhill that he wanted to run down.  We went for a hike on Saturday, and I let him jog down all the hills he wished and watched him go down to his knees a couple of times on tricky ones.  Yep, that's why we walk down those steep hills, Peanut!  He was fine, btw, just clumsy.  However, I learned to trust my instincts and insist that we go down as I say, and that I'm not just suffering from low confidence.