Viva La Revolution!

There are barefoot rumblings at my barn.  That is all.

Viva la revolution!

Ahem.

I don't have much time, so this will have to be split between topics.  Today, trimming.

On Saturday I trimmed Peanut's fronts, but left the heels alone except for balancing.  He was unhappy for two weeks after each trim, and is now finally happy again after his last one.  I have been unhappy about this for a while, as it seems that his heels are long yet he won't tolerate them being shorter.  Ah well, I thought, I just have to boot him and his delicate footsies.

On Sunday morning, before Kate came out, I trimmed the rears.  Again, there really wasn't much to take off at all other than the width, arches, and slight lowering of the heels.

She looked him over, and had some interesting observations:

• Thrush.  She dug away at his central sulcuses and found grubby black stuff at the bottom.  When she pulled some of it out and sniffed it, it was thrushy.  I tried to sniff, but smelled nothing as the breeze blew the smell away.  She said that this happened with her horse too - he was barefoot and otherwise seemed great.  However, his heels were annoyingly long, he was grouchy on rocks when she trimmed his heels as short as she wanted, he had little concavity, and his breakover was into his sole.  He also always wore his toes so that they would never get any height on them at all.  The frogs were almost constantly shedding, too.  Oh, and there was chronic loss of attachment halfway down the toe.  All of this is describing Peanut!!!  Even though he didn't seem thrushy, she treated him anyway.  Soon, concavity came into his soles, his toes actually grew, his frogs stopped shedding, and she was able to trim those heels.  YAY!  I'll see what happens with the Nutterbear.
• Bevel those heels!  Peanut's heels have always popped way out into flares.  She showed me a new way to bevel them to get them under control and hopefully break the cycle.

We also talked about balancing, etc, and she told me that his trim was great other than what I described above.  Keen.

With Gene, she had some nice observations on his deformed foot, mainly about the coffin bone placement (while the heel bulbs may be a disaster, his coffin bone is where it should be and not tilted.  She also noticed that Gene is slightly pigeon-toed in his front left.  Once she said it, I wondered how I ever missed missed it.  It's not like his toe really points in - it points forward but his knee points slightly to the outside.

One of the other boarders is interested in having Kate trim her horses, and will do so the next time she comes around in early December.  I really hope it happens and I hope it goes well.

Viva la revolution!