Sounds vs. "sound"

First, to clarify a very important point left over from my last post: If the hooves are unhealthy, soreness after a trim might be a sign of healing. If the hooves are healthy, however, the horse should NEVER be sore after a trim.

The nice thing about really healthy, sound hooves is that they are resilient. For instance, Gwen has never been sore after a trim, ever. Which is really amazing considering how many times I've screwed up. Fortunately for her, I studied and documented and kept improving so I didn't make the same mistakes over and over. For a sound horse, one bad trim shouldn't hurt much, a series of bad trims will probably ruin them.

A "sound" horse is a different matter. This is the horse that most people think is sound but really isn't. Coriander falls into this category, nine years of no hoof care (before I got him) on top of halter horse breeding have given my boy less than perfect hooves. That poor horse is my trim barometer- if my trim is a little off he'll show me. Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist trying to figure out exactly how he wants his hooves trimmed: leave the heels higher here, leave the toes longer there. It takes trial and error to keep that horse happy.

It's my personal opinion that there are a lot more "sound" horses out there than sound. When I go out to trim a new horse I always ask the owner to lunge the horse for me so I can do a lameness check. Most of the time I find that the horse is a little off on one foot or another- but the owner never saw it! Now, I am not an expert on diagnosing lameness, I think people just get used to seeing their horse move a certain way and think they're fine. And really, here's where the problem lies for the trimmer: If the owner already knows their horse hurts then they can usually handle a little soreness after the trim if they know healing is happening, If the owner doesn't know anything is wrong with their horse then they'll probably freak out.

Here's a short list of what I consider to be signs that your horse might only be "sound." I'm not saying that all of these are definite signs of unhealthy hooves, just that they are often correlated:

• If your horse is perfectly comfortable on sand or soft grass but has issues as soon as they step on pavement, concrete, or hard dirt (gravel doesn't count, that's hard for most horses)
• If your normally well-mannered horse is especially averse to picking up a specific hoof
• If your horse takes short strides/ has a limited range of motion
• If your horse does not stand with the front legs straight underneath them but with them stretched forward or back
• If your horse typically stands with one front hoof in front of the other/pointing a hoof (not when grazing)
• If your horse has bouts of "mystery lameness" but seems fine most of the time
• If your horse squeals or bucks when jumping (this could also be a back/tack issue)
• If your horse is a dead-head in the pasture but turns into a fire breathing dragon as soon as you mount (again, might be a back/tack issue)

Want to read a little story about me screwing up? Of course you do. I trimmed a horse that I knew was lame and unhealthy but the owner was completely clueless; thought the horse was perfectly healthy.

Here she was before:

and after: 

I learned a lot from trimming this horse, because she hurt after the trim and the owner flipped out. I learned that you can do the right thing for the horse (this was the trim she needed, after she got past the soreness she moved better than she had in months) but if you don't prepare the owner it's all for naught. I also learned (after consulting with my mentors) that the growth rings showed this horse was foundering- they are further apart at the heels and starting to bunch together at the toes. Which is not surprising considering the horse had been taken away from a place where she was starving and thrown immediately into spring grass. It was just a bad situation all around, basically the owner was a neglectful ________.

If I had to trim that horse again (I wouldn't) I would leave the toes and heels a little longer to try to avoid some of the short term soreness. Chances are she would have been sore anyway. Live and learn.

Should a horse ever be sore after a trim?

I've been putting this off because this is a topic that will potentially make me very unpopular, but I just saw a horse that put it in the front of my mind. Last week I got a call from a kid who just got his first horse and wanted me to trim her, when I got out there I found out that all her hooves looked like this:

And all I could think was, "I'm never going to see this horse again."

Why would I think that? Because with a hoof like this I know there's a very good chance the horse will come away from the trim sore. Most horse owners will immediately fire any trimmer who leaves their horse sore.

"But wouldn't they be justified?" You may say, "surely a good trimmer wouldn't leave a horse sore after a trim?"

Here's the truth: Healing hurts. If you've ever had physical therapy you know this very well. If you've ever had someone massage knots out of your back or neck you know this as well. It hurts, and then you feel better.

Look at the hoof pictured, note the long walls, bars and lumpy sole. Overly long hoof walls will, through the force of the hoof impacting the ground, tear away from the coronet band little by little. Overly long bars will bruise the corium and press on the DDFT and navicular bone. Lumpy soles will also bruise the corium under the coffin bone. All of these things are painful.

Do you know how humans can eventually tune out the pain of wearing uncomfortable shoes but once you take the shoes off your feet hurt like heck? Over time horses can tune out the pain in their feet too, and once you take away the overgrowth damaging the hoof, guess what happens- their feet hurt like heck.

So here's the trimmer's dilemma: Do you do enough to let the hoof heal and risk the horse being sore, or do you do as little as possible to maintain the status quo and let the damage keep happening? Personally, I'll take the temporary soreness if it means that the hoof is healing.

If the trim is good but the horse is sore it means that healing is happening, if you wait a few days for the pain to go away you'll probably find that the horse is moving much better than they were before the trim. That's how rehabilitation works, sometimes you have to take a step back to make a leap forward. (If the trim is bad and the horse is sore that's a big problem, this is where the onus is on the owner to know a good trim from a bad one.)

Okay- back to the horse. She was initially very nervous, didn't want to pick up her feet and even nipped at me once. Obviously she didn't have pleasant associations with trims. Fortunately her attitude completely changed through the course of the trim and she became quite friendly towards me. I found evidence of damage on all of her feet though, bruising around the white line, bruising around the bars, bruising on the soles... they were a mess. Despite that it seems that she wasn't sore after the trim (I asked the owner to contact me if she was) which I think is because her feet were essentially pretty healthy underneath all that junk (note the round shape of the hoof and the nice wide heels).

Next up (eventually): Sound vs. "sound."

Almost ready!

I realize that my last post was pretty cryptic so here's what's happening: We bought a house!

Somehow, after about 8 years of looking, my husband and I found a house we could both be happy with. Let me tell you, it isn't easy to find a house when I'm insistent on buying a place where I can keep the horses and my husband wants it in a specific small town. I can't tell you how many crappy, old farm houses we've seen in the past few years. Enough so that we could make up rules about looking at them, like: If you can close your eyes and walk across the floor without falling it's pretty good, if the river in the basement has a current that's pretty bad.

Want to know how we found it? Sure you do. Craigslist. No kidding, I put up an ad that we were looking for a house with land and this guy responded to it. Comes out the house was around the corner from the one we were renting, 2 miles from where the horses are now. Another interesting detail: The house was built for a distant cousin of my husband by another group of his cousins. Small world.

But guess what? If you're buying a house with acreage the banks can't deal. Maybe in Wyoming they can, but here in central New York if you've got more than 2 acres they freak out and screw you on the mortgage. Apparently they're afraid that if we default they won't be able to sell the place. Jerks.

Also, be very, very wary of gas leases. Banks don't want to mortgage properties with gas leases, period. Our place had a gas lease and the seller had to get out of it before we could get a mortgage. Apparently this wasn't a problem a couple of years ago but now it is, so if you are a landowner and you think you might want to sell someday- don't get a gas lease (not to mention there's a whole slew of environmental reasons why you shouldn't do it either).

So we own a house - with almost 30 acres, most of which needs to cleared before we can use it - so we've been kind of busy lately. Fortunately my first, sacrifice, pasture is nearly ready.

There are some dips and holes in the field that need to be filled in, the run-in needs a few boards, the t-posts need caps, and I need to get some hay but I'm sure I can get those done and bring the horses home early next month. I just have to figure out how I'm going to get them here!

Foreshadowing...

Finally frog!

Gwen's right hind

Finally! That frog is a thing of beauty, healthy and full-bodied with not a thrush crack in sight. Now that's what I'm talking about!

Now I just have to get the other 7 hooves to look like this...

Best. Things. Ever.

To what do I refer?

Feedbags

I kid you not, if you have pasture-kept horses these things are brilliant.

A few months ago a certain gelding decided that eating a few bites out of his feed pan and then kicking his grain out all over the ground before grinding it all into the mud was a good idea. He would then proceed to do the same to his sister's food.

Now imagine that there's a heavily pregnant woman ranting at him about how he's wasting ALL OF HER FREAKING MONEY.

Yeah, it's kind of amusing. Now. It wasn't then.

So when I had had enough, I bought them feedbags and said to Coriander, "There, try to dump your feed all over the ground now." Hahahahahahahaa.

Amazingly, both horses took to them immediately, even Every-New-Object-Is-Potentially-Life-Threatening Gwen. Probably because it was filled with food. Now there is no more food dumping and no more stealing the other's rations. Even better, you can squirt their wormer into their feed and they will eat it! Thank you Paradigm Farms for introducing me to this concept. No more drama over worming! I LOVE my feedbags!

The brilliance in action:

That's about it for horse excitement around here. I manage to sneak in some ground work a few days a week and I'm slowing getting their feet back under control. Getting so big you can't trim your own toenails kind of gets in the way of trimming your horses. I did take a few rides about 4 weeks postpartum but then the land-owners IR mare came back and in jerry-rigging the fence to keep her off the pasture, the gate kind of disappeared, so that ended riding for the time being. But that's okay, taking care of my little dude has pretty much trumped everything else. An exciting change is in the horizon for the horses though- more on that next month. In the meantime here is a gratuitous photo of my little cowboy:

He's here!

Our little boy was born on the evening of March 28, he was 7lbs, 12oz and 19.5" long. We're still trying to get used to life with a newborn, but so far he's just about the sweetest, cutest thing ever.

Please excuse me as I disappear for a few weeks. I'll be back.