Friday 11 November 2011

Hoofcare and Equine Body Work: Kingsley and Pocholo Video Diaries

Good news all round. Both boys are doing well self-trimming their feet and Kate didn't have to make any dramatic changes to their feet to my great relief!



Kingsley's feet have amazingly all started to even up. Considering how oddly shaped they all were not so long ago it is interesting to see them becoming consistently shaped - could it be the sign of improved biomechanics of the whole body?
This is how they looked in April:


Front feet aside, I am really amazed at how nicely his hind hooves look now (if you enlarge the above photo you will see that his hind feet were very unbalanced and growing in all sorts of directions).
Today, the only foot with unequal weight load is his left hind which corresponds to his movement mechanics. He has larger, stronger lateral part of that hoof and weaker, less developed medial part. Kate wrote on his report: "all good frogs, soles, concavity, heels, bars a little high at the heels".
One problem he does have is signs of white line separation (WLS) on all four feet and Kate suggested changing Cal Mag to Magnesium Oxide as well as upping his work it all possible. I will try both.
Susanna found him much calmer and accepting of treatment, nothing gone worse, some improvement in the hamstrings - much less tight and very good changes to forearm' muscles which were very tight (bone like).

Pocholo has improved immensly on the left side of his body - no soreness or tightness which I hoped to hear. His right side had some tight spots but nothing major. Big improvement from October.



Pocholo's feet are all different. Each has a set of good and bad points but overall Kate thinks he is doing great. Main problem is that due to his high heels his frogs don't get enough stimulation on the surfaces that he feels comfortable on. I will need to find some more stimulating surface that allows more contact with the frogs but where he will not be too uncomfortable on. Ah, if only there was a pebbly beach nearby :)
He is wearing his right fore more on the right side and less on the left side whilst his left hind has much stronger right side.
As his feet have still a long way to go and changes happen all the time Kate suggested I continue with current workload and reassess 6 weeks later. I am happy with that.

Great day and I feel like I got to 'know' the boys a bit better today. It was super to have Susanna there in the same time as we could discuss the issues from three different perspectives: the training, the feel of the body and from the hoofcare point of view.


And to end: Kingsley with "his pony"! It's so great to see he has a little friend. Apparently they play for hours together :) Kingsley - the horse that always got bullied or sent away finally has a play buddy :)

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