I have just checked Jean's blog and she is off power after the hurricane with her supplier estimating November ninth for reconnection. What a nightmare for her. We're all thinking of you Jean!
Woody is now unsound in the other front leg, but again it wears off within a short time of walking. So it is likely, again, to be a soft tissue thing, possibly a broken adhesion, which should hopefully resolve as quickly as the one in his left fore. All change is good at the moment, and he is already far ahead of where I thought we would be at three weeks. His landing is now definitely heel first, with an increasing use of his heels and frogs as the shock absorbers that they should be. His feet, previously 5 long and 6 wide, are beginning to come into a more normal length now he has stopped using his toes to land on and wearing them off.
The right hind, the diagonal opposite to his worse front, the left, is fascinating. I don't think I have ever seen a horse with a bigger outward twist in the fetlock as he walks. He is also putting absolutely all his weight down the outside of the foot. But the foot is changing fast and will soon support his leg properly. At that point it will be interesting to see how that changes the diagonally opposite forefoot. I suspect, even though he has been barefoot behind for a long time, that he has as many problems with his back feet as he does with his fronts, and that it was necessary for all four to be allowed to make their own shape for him to come right.
His front feet are both rolling the toe at the outside quarter. I will be taking a very keen look at how he is now moving to see just how he is managing to wear his toe where he is, because I think it's actually quite difficult to do it!
This afternoon I rode Ace with some trepidation, and I had to force myself to do it, because the wind was both bitterly cold and very strong. Not only did I not want to ride a bucking horse but I wasn't keen to go out in that weather myself!! But he was a good boy. All he did was one kick on on the left canter transition and even then it was much less of a kick than normal. I don't know if this is anything to do with the fact that I have put him into a 350gram 1600 denier rug, but I suspect it might be.
Tomorrow Radar and I should be hunting, but it will depend on the weather. There was sleet just now and I am certainly not going to sit in the middle of a field in that :-) !!
C
There's so much damage from the storm that I am not surprised Jean is off line until Nov 9th, as long as that seems. What is outrageous is her generator failing when it's brand new.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting that Ace was a good boy today. If a warm rug has that big of an effect, well then, that's easy to deal with.
It's so bad, isn't it ML, when she goes to the expense of having backup power and then it doesn't work!?
ReplyDeleteC