Nutrition woes

The Quarter's frogs look like CRAP again. This is so disheartening. Over the past year I've gotten the nutritional aspect of thrush hammered into me over and over and over again. Sometimes, if not most of the time, thrush is a side affect of what goes in the horse's mouth and not what goes on the horse's hooves.

Let me just say that again: Thrush is not only a product of the horse's environment, poor nutrition is a deciding factor

I put my horses on California Trace in April and started seeing results in May, it was working and I was happy. BUT my horses didn't like it and I had to mask the flavor with anise seed powder to get them to eat it. Since it's also pretty expensive and only available over the internet I decided to look for some other options.

I went looking for something local, found DuMor Hoof (which I chose over Farrier's Formula after looking at the ingredients), and they ate that for about two months.

I don't know if my horses are especially hard keepers or what, but all the frog growth they'd gained while eating California Trace was lost while they ate the DuMor- and that was with me spraying on oxine and dusting with No Thrush nearly every day. Basically the topical treatments just kept the thrush from eating the live frogs, it didn't helped the callused frog grow out at all. The only good thing about it was that the Quarters liked the taste. Basically it was a giant waste of money, time to move on.

While I was in Oregon somebody recommended the Figuerola products to me so I decided to try out Equinesaver.

They've had this for the past month, while their winter coats have started growing in nicely and they love the taste, I haven't seen any sign that their frogs are improving (still treating with topicals, mind you). Knowing that copper and zinc are super important for coat and hoof growth I took a closer look at the ingredients on the bucket. Holy crud! The amounts of copper and zinc in Equinesaver are miniscule at best, no wonder their feet haven't been improving!

So after kicking myself for taking them off something that was working, last night I bought some more California Trace and should have it by the end of the week.

The moral of the story is that I've decided I'm tired of taking wild guesses about my horses' nutritional needs and have signed up for Dr. Eleanor Kellon's NRC Plus course. The class runs from November 7 through January 9 if anyone is interested in taking it with me.

Thrush update

It's been a while since I've posted pictures but it's been a while since I felt like their frogs were post-worthy. If you recall I first was alerted to Coriander's ridiculously awful thrush infection last November and I've been treating him for it ever since. At the same time Gwen was also afflicted. We've had some ups and downs and a whole lot more learnin' on my part about foot health, nutrition, and thrush remedies since then.

These photos are from yesterday. Yeah, the trim looks not so great- I've still got a bunch to learn about how to use my tools (I'm going to trimming school in August, YAY!)- but my horses are sound and soundness is more important than looks. You can see that Coriander has still been landing toe first and has been pulling the front of his feet forward. It's been driving me crazy. I'd pull his toe back and he'd just pull it forward again by slamming down toe first. Finally, *finally*, as his frogs have come in he's started to land heel first most of the time.

Coriander's left fore- the clubbed one

Coriander's right fore

If it looks like his heels are high keep in mind that his frogs are still growing in, making it look like his heels are taller than they are. Though I do have an interesting (shameful) story about how I learned why Coriander has a club foot. I had been easing the heels on that club foot down the to same height as the heels on his right fore. Well guess what? When I finally got the heels down to the same height he went lame. I happened to be perusing the internet looking for something else when I found a farrier who talked about assessing the horse's entire body balance for soundness. He specifically mentioned looking at how the knees lined up. I went out and looked at Coriander's knees and - Lo And Behold!- his left knee was a 1/4 inch lower than his right knee. Whoops! I guess his left foot is clubbed because his left leg is shorter. Good to know.

And here are Gwen's feet. Note that she still has a crack down the middle of her frog. Her frogs don't look as good as Coriander's for one reason: He'll let me soak his feet and she won't. For that reason I've had to change my treatment tactics. I got a spray bottle, filled it with a 40:60 oxine to water ratio, and started spraying their frogs with that every day to every other day. I started doing that three weeks ago and can already see improvement. The crack between her heels is starting to fill in nicely. Other interesting things are starting to happen as a result of the spraying too- like the ditch around Coriander's left fore frog. It seems the tip of that frog wasn't healthy so now it's gone. Fascinating.

Gwen's right fore

Gwen's left fore

I want to note that even though her frogs still look thrushy she's sounder than her brother, a true rock cruncher. For a while I didn't understand why until I took a closer look at the back of their feet. Take a look at how much more robust the back of her foot, or the digital cushion, looks compared to Coriander's. I don't know if she got more exercise when she was a baby than he did or if there's a genetic factor going on but the difference is huge. Either way, I've got my fingers crossed that someday the back of his feet will look that robust.

Something else I want to add about thrush:

I trimmed my client horse this week and was dismayed to hear the owner tell me she'd stopped treating his thrush "since it's been dry." Um no. Whether it's wet or dry doesn't really make a difference. If your horse has thrush you need to treat it until it's gone. Period. That might take months but you have to persevere and keep after it despite the environmental conditions. I also told her she needs to get him on a mineral supplement to assist his grass diet. There simply aren't enough minerals in the forage around here to produce healthy hooves. I've come to learn that when it comes to thrush, what goes in the horse's mouth is just as, if not more, important as what you put on their feet.

Coriander gallops and Gwen ponies up

But not on the same ride, I wanted to clarify that right at the start. I'm not that crazy... close, but not quite.

Coriander's been telling me that he's ready to go for a gallop and this week I finally felt like we might be able to do it, it wasn't awful cold and there was enough snow that I figured we probably wouldn't have an ice problem. I took him out to our favorite spot (long, flat and straight- without holes) and let him go.

I've never felt him traveling so effortlessly before, he was literally gliding over the ground and it really did feel like flying. Unfortunately we hit a patch of ice, not enough to cause a wreck but enough for us to simultaneously decide to slow down. In hindsight it occurs to me that I've never before cantered/galloped him when his feet weren't bothering him. He picked up thrush at the old barn and we never cantered there. This is the first time he's been sound since the move; it's incredible what a difference pain-free feet make- and they've still got a long way to go!

Left fore today

Right fore today

Remember how I said I wanted to wait and pony Gwen when the footing was better? Well she's been stuffing herself out of the gate when I get her brother (naughty) so I told her if she's going to do that she has to do some work. I hauled out the western saddle and threw it up on Coriander's back, grabbed a long lead for Gwen's halter and away we went.

Almost immediately I found a pretty disastrous bit of pilot error. I don't know what it is about western saddles, but I'm a complete idiot with them. I thought I had cinched the girth up tight before I got on, but when I reached down to check it was loose! Uber crud. I then found a huge, gaping hole in Coriander's training when he refused to stand still for me to tighten it up. Not too fun when I've got one hand to tighten the girth and one hand to hold Gwen (this is where a ground person would have helped a lot, unfortunately ground persons are unavailable 99% of the time). I ended up dismounting to tighten the girth and then had to mount again from the ground. Learning opportunities, right?

After that though, it was smooth sailing. There's a nice, short loop in the back fields, about 3/4 mile long where I took her for her first trip. She's been there before, we went the exact same way when we walked out with Rocky so I figured it'd be a good place to start. Both horses did really well! Coriander made a few nasty faces at her when she tried to get ahead of us a few times but that was it. Gwen's brain stayed firmly inside her skull the whole time, and even better than that, I think she enjoyed it. We even flushed a group of deer and nothing bad happened. Both horses stopped to look but nobody spooked! There were treats all around for that one.

Overall, ponying was a success; we will definitely be doing it again. Now if I could only figure out that western saddle once and for all we'd be all set...

Thrush recovery: 2 months

Left fore

Right fore

This is how Coriander's frogs looked last Sunday. They are coming along, slowly filling in from the crack between his heels. The overactive heel and bar growth are finally slowing down now, still high, but I can tell that change is afoot (he he).

I've ended up going in about once a week to cut off more and more of that old, diseased frog. You can see the difference in color between the old stuff and the new healthy growth underneath in his left fore (click on the photos to enlarge them). I'll need to go back this weekend and cut off more dead frog and also take those bars back, but I trimmed Gwen first on Sunday so I was a little tired when I got to him. Look at how nice and thick his walls are growing in though, and how nicely shaped his toes have become. He's going to have a darn nice foot once his frog is complete. I wish his feet would grow a little faster but it is winter, after all. I'm guessing that it will take another two months before he has full, robust frogs, but he seems sound enough under saddle now for light work (walk, trot only).

Stay tuned: I've been taking photos once a week that I'll be posting once the process is complete. That might make me the sole source on the web for documenting frog growth. This is how world domination starts, folks.

Horse agility

You know I want to do this with Gwen, it's like this was made for her. If only the Horse Agility Club had a following in the States...

In other news, Coriander's frogs continue to grow and Gwen's scratches are starting to clear up. I've been using a combination of Banixx and No Thrush to treat it (which I think ends up being pretty similar to the remedy that Kate suggested: Desenex powder and Equyss spray) and the scabs have been slowly going away on their own and the cracking behind her fetlocks is closing up. Poor girl with such sensitive skin, no one else in the pasture is having this issue.

Thrush epiphany

The friendly people at No Thrush just advanced my understanding of thrush by leaps and bounds in three sentences. Here is part of their response to my pictures:

"The original photos tell the whole story. The sulcus and lateral groves are so deep, and the frog is so narrow, and there is such a concentration of thrush in there, that once the thrush and disease begin to get under control, that top layer will almost always shed. It is not unusual for the entire V to come off if the frog is extensively infested with thrush/disease."

After I read that I went back and took another look at his before photos.

Just ignore the uneven heels for now

This is the view I should have been looking at. Just look at how deep those cracks go into his feet, all the way to the hairline! That is all from thrush. Look at Gwen's non-thrushy foot below for comparison, no deep crack there.

Now lets take a closer look at the pictures I posted last time.

This picture proves that the No Thrush WAS working. See how the tissue is filling up what used to be a super deep crack? That was why it took so long for me to see results, his frog had a LOT of recovering to do from deep inside the hoof capsule. There was also the issue of me not knowing what to look for, though I think I have an inkling now.

Since I'm feeling a whole lot better now that his feet are on the road to improvement, I can go back and cogitate on the other signs of thrush he was exhibiting. Right off the bat I want to say that there was NO stink and NO black ooze in his feet. Don't let the lack of those symptoms fool you like it fooled me. Other than the clues my eyes should have given me when looking at his feet (and will from now on) I should have noticed other symptoms under saddle. For instance he was very footy on rocks, even little rocks. He had also started being a total slug in the arena which, in hindsight, was probably because the footing was getting up in those cracks and irritating his feet. It's a testament to his stoicism that he wasn't lame all the time.

I'm posting this in the hopes that I can help somebody else with thrush issues. If I didn't know this then I'm betting that there are a lot of other people who don't know it either. I encourage everyone reading this to pick up their horses' hooves and look at those heels and frogs. If they look anything like Coriander's then TREAT THEM NOW! Your horse will thank you.

I just stumbled on this post by an endurance rider that confirms my new understanding of thrush: Thrush does not always smell and it is not always obvious.

Coriander's frogs

Ugh, I've been sweating bullets over his feet for a few weeks now. At the recommendation of my trimming consultant, I used a specific product to fight thrush in Coriander's feet.

Here are his frogs before I used the product, you can tell that all was not well in Frogsville.

 Here are his frogs about a week after I flipped out about how his frogs had disintegrated and decided to stop using that product. The pictures make his frogs look better than the reality. The flaps next to his heels weren't attached to anything and there was nothing between them, I could stick my whole pinky down the central sulcus. Holy Freaking Crap, what had I done to his feet!

 The last photos are after I started using Pete's Goo a week ago (a mix of antifungal and antibacterial creams). This week has been a little hairy. Once the rutted ground in the pasture froze up, Coriander went DEAD lame. Thank goodness I have the Cavallo boots because he's been living in them since Monday. That is so NOT ideal since I worry about nasty crud breeding the boots but he couldn't get around without them. Fortunately it looks like he's finally getting some frog growth again. I cut out the flaps at his heels since they were doing more harm than good and I think that's made a ton of difference in making him more comfortable. Comfortable enough to leave the boots off today, I'll have to see how he's looking tomorrow, but I've got the boots ready if I need to stick them back on.

I contacted the company this week, basically telling them that their product appears to have destroyed his frogs. Here's the response from the president of the company:

"Thanks for letting us know about your horse.  We would love to see the 
pictures!  I have personally seen and heard of this development many times. 
And believe it or not, it's entirely positive. It sounds like your horse's 
feet were quite diseased.  When the [product] dries out any diseased hoof it 
looks like the frog has been "eaten" away - in actuality, that part was most 
likely mush before you dusted it, once dried out there is nothing there. Now 
that the you have made the area inhospitable to thrush/disease, the new 
healthy frog has a positive environment to grow back.  So, I know it may 
look dramatic, but I believe you're on the right track!"

Um, really? A little warning on their website would be nice. I sent them a document today with these pictures. I'll have to wait and see what they say about what happened. I'll decide about revealing the product name until after they've responded to my photos. At this point I don't know if their product really did the trick or if it was the switch to Pete's Goo. All I know was that I didn't see any improvement in frog growth until after the switch.

I'm just super relieved that he seems to be improving!