Rally makes progress

 Since I am still waiting on the hives to heal I have done a few different things with Rally. I have a lot more done on her hinds now, still have to use the rope to aid in picking up her hind feet, really saves on my back. I reward her when she rests the toe on the ground; there I can clean them and do a little with the nippers too. Yesterday and today I was able to hold the left foot up by the toe and nip the toe on it, all except the very last little bit and it wasn't worth fighting any longer for that as she started out being a little kicky and had to be Told. A side note here, Rally is very good at reading my energy and absolutely knows when she has crossed the behavior line. No need to get physical. 

You can see the last little bit just past where the straw is pointing

.

Looking much better so far

Once I finish nipping and can rasp to dress it up, that foot should look decent. Next up, finish that and do the right hind, tomorrow's project. 

I have also got her crossing the barrels asking for her to pause once her front feet are over and then step back. 

She now steps over and waits to see if I want her to go forward or back. Good girl Rally! 

I have also been working on sidepassing from the ground. Her go to when she is confused or just not wanting to do what I ask is to threaten to bite. So I am aware of that and make sure if I see that building in her to make my request even more clear. And love up on her when she does it right. Today she did a couple steps each way correctly, so that was enough. 

Trailer loading has become her reward- she sure has come a long way with that! 

I always start each session with her feet; clean the fronts and see what they need; today I asked her to bring each foot forward and put it on the trimming stand so I could rasp the flares and round the edges, and that was a success!  

Proof! 

There is still a bit to clean up on her soles and frog but that can wait now until I get the hinds done. Overall I am pretty happy with her progress. 

Patsy update- all back to normal. This morning they had tipped the salt tub over and spilled both blocks and the loose salt. Oy! Refilled and we shall see if they do that again. We had a rocking thunderstorm last night complete with torrential rain, big boomers right overhead and some pea sized hail. All 4 mares stood quietly in their shelter. I think having those older mares not worrying about all the ruckus is good for Patsy, she was as unfazed as they were. 

Next up

 I finally got a decent trim on Rally's front feet. Now I am no farrier just an old lady with a bad back, and Rally is not really foot broke, so it has taken me a long time doing things a little at a time. I found that she is willing to lift her feet much better when I ask with my lariat. 

 

Eventually her feet look like this:

The next day I did clean up the sole with my hoof knife and rasped more flare from the hoof wall. 

A long way from perfect but so much better than this, which is what they looked like the day I bought her. 

Today I started on working with her hind feet. They have been self trimming lately; with all the rain and soggy pasture her feet are pretty soft and some chunks have come off. She wasn't too happy with me lifting and holding her foot so I went to square one, just asking her to lift her feet with my rope- so much easier on my back. 

I did this with both hinds, and when she would lift and set each foot down without kicking, that was enough for today. 

I was also able to send her in to the trailer twice today, yay! She kinda looked at me as if to say, "aren't you coming in?" No, Rally, you are a big girl now you can do it on your own! 

I have also done a bit with Patsy, she is so refreshingly easy after working with Rally! 

I got her started on longeing, she goes over the bridge without any worries, and the tarp work was easy too. 

In fact, so easy that Shayla asked me to introduce her to being blanketed. 

Easy peasy! Patsy also heads straight for the trailer if I turn her loose and has to check for grain in there. One thing I do have to work on with her is backing, both on the ground and backing out of the trailer. 

Always something to do! 

Some pretties

 I finally have flowers! My new flower garden has these:

Lavatera

The first bloom on the Jackmani clematis

Yellow marigolds

As well as the pincushion flowers and pink snapdragons and pink  zinnias that are a bit faded and need to be pruned to promote new blooms. The two roses are taking their time to bud, guess they aren't fond of the cooler rainy weather. 

My older flower garden I let the calendula and cosmos that reseeded take over, only new stuff in there are snapdragons and my garden peas which are going to be harvestable soon. 

Calendula and cosmos

I enjoy having pretties to gaze upon on my walks to the barnyard!

Rally now leads into the trailer perfectly, so I started working on her feet again. She is getting pretty good with her left front, I have nipped it and rasped it, a little at a time. It needs more but its a lot better. Her right front she is more reluctant with, I did get to clean it today. Every day, a little progress. Good thing I'm not in a hurry! 

The most important thing in their world is grazing! Humans are definitely second place. 

The farrier was here yesterday and did the other 3; she loved Patsy, who was actually pretty good for her first trim. I noticed with Velvet that she cant handle having the farrier put her front feet between the knees for trimming, it cranks her leg out too much angle from her shoulder and her old bones cant take that any more. Velvet is short and wide so there isn't much room under her. I asked the farrier to not do that but to trim her low; it meant she had to do everything one handed as she held the foot but Velvet was much happier. I don't think the farrier was though. 

Beamer feet, and minions

Edited to add: Tara at luvmyhrs answered Calm Forward and Straight's comment about bars- very good info.


Warning possibly boring post unless you are a hoof nerd!

Beamer is walking much better today, the sprained leg is much better.. I have been working on his feet trying to rehab them from years of me not understanding proper hoofcare and since I have been following the ABC Hoofcare system, his feet keep on improving. Once in a while when I see changes  I am not expecting I get a little freaked. For example, we knew that the bar had overgrown and extended under his frog as well as pooling and growing over the apex of the frog. The other day, there was a clearly defined ridge of bar that went from the normal bar trail, all the way to the end of the frog, and I could see that it was underneath too. This isn't the best photo but it shows the ridge I'm talking about. Pink arrow is the normal bar, the blue arrow is the bar ridge that popped out.

 For perspective, this is the whole hoof with the same color arrows:

There are still issues with thrush and too deep of collateral groves- it's a work in progress. Anyway, I cleaned it up. This is after a White Lightning soak.

Tara pointed out a bar smear, and looking at the photo it's easy to find.
The bright green areas are bar smear that I removed today, and the blue outline is where I hadn't followed the bar trail with my knife quite deep enough to straighten out the bar line.

The really cool thing is that today, when I cleaned out his feet, the apex of the frog, which as you can see in the above photos is embedded, has popped free- at last!!!!

My hoof knife is under the tip of the frog. If you look at the above photos you can see that the tip of that frog was embedded yesterday, also how stretched out that frog has become; it is much more than the 2/3 frog 1/3 to the toe that it should be.

Here is the foot with the corrections done; you can see how much better the length of the frog is and where I did the adjustments to the bar. The frog on the lateral side is still embedded, so I'm hoping it will pop free soon too.
Beamer is enjoying the attention of my nieces- I call them his minions. For the sake of a little humour and because I don't have permission to post their photos on the internet, here are his minions tending to the king of the farm.

Hoofs and bratitude

Today was the day I put my studying to the test. Remember the hoof care book I got? Coyote Belle got to be the guinea pig, as I don't ride her, so if I messed up it wouldn't have a major impact.  Here is her left front before trimming;

I kind of got distracted by Nitro, he was having a moment:

I swear I don't know how he stays on his feet sometimes.  He had a few more moments....

and since he was ripping around......


and the ground was too wet for me to see my guideline marks, I left him in there and moved the mare over on to the cement pad. (Dogs were banished to the porch too!)
So with lots of referencing my book, here is how that foot looks:

There's still a few issues with it, so I'll probably work on it some more tomorrow.

Right front before: (you can see that the toe was self trimming)

and after:

Like I said, it's a work in progress. 

Here's a side view:

You can see that she has arches at the hairline, and I did relieve the quarters so I'll see what it looks like tomorrow.  I don't think I got the 30 degree angle right, and I probably need to take more toe, but I'll check all that tomorrow- I got over heated and had to quit. I admire those women who can trim more than two hooves in a day- this is hard work for an old gal like me!
Getting back to Nitro, he will be 3 months old on Friday, so I'll be doing the post I promised of all of Belle's foals at 3 months.

Flowers, fun and flight

Hey, Crystal, the rose does look better in the sunshine!. We finally got some nice weather. I  led Chickory over some hard smooth ground to help toughen up her feet, then went for a putt down the road on Gussie; great day for a ride! Gussie didn't want to leave the homeplace, I think she figured that she should get some pasture time, but I got her lined out and on down the road we went- got a nice photo for Sunday Stills, the challenge this week is roads.
Yesterday, I caught a really neat shot of Nitro- he was puddle jumping.

He landed and then lit up the afterburners as he raced for the gate I had open to the pasture. Mud don't scare this boy!

The baby Raven spent the whole of yesterday in the rainstorm hanging out on a branch in one of the trees, I finally shooed it over to another tree just so he could figure out that yes, he could fly in the rain, and then this morning all 3 Ravens were gone. One of them was around this afternoon, but I'm hoping that they will stay away for a while so the Owl can come back.
I got my Hoofcare book, and once I'm done reading it, I will be doing some trimming, starting with Belle and Nitro; the other ones I have touched up a few times, but Belle hasn't been done since Tara did her on May 19, so it should be interesting. Might take me a couple of days, but I'll get 'er done!

Hoofcare book

Some of you have requested info on which books I'm buying as I learn how to trim my own horses; Here is a link to ABC Hoofcare; if you click on their products button, you will see the book. I just ordered the book and I'm pretty excited to get it! Also, I've created a new page of links on my sidebar (top right) which I will add to as I explore more websites and products.

Who knows best?

This post is something I've been debating on writing for a while. I don't like dissing people, but I think we as horse owners need to be able to make informed decisions about the welfare of our equines. Last month my regular farrier didn't show up when I expected him to, and a friend from another province was visiting and since she is a barefoot trimmer, I asked her to do my horses. What should have been a simple trim for each horse became a rehabilitation project; I won't go into details but none of my horses had the kind of feet they should have had after a year in the care of a professional barefoot hoof care provider. I am very grateful for my friend for the education she gave me, but since she lives very far away, the end result is that I have decided to learn to trim my own horses.There is a book or two that I will be getting to help me, and I get a lot of support and advice both from my friend and from Mrs. Mom- who I consider a friend, even though we haven't met!- and I'm finding that it isn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Of course, I can't do a lot in one session, but I plug away at it. The money I'm saving on farrier fees will go into educating myself.  The following photos show Beamer's feet in May before my friend trimmed him, and just the other day, after I gave him another maintenance trim.

They are a work in progress, and I still have so much to learn. The point of this post is to encourage people to get involved in the care of their horses feet, don't just blindly trust that your farrier is doing the best thing for your horse just because he's a professional. I'm sure many of you are more educated on this than I am, but you are never too old to learn.

Trimming and training

I had all the horses trimmed on Tuesday, and I must say I'm pretty proud of Rio. Not only was he quiet for the farrier, he stood tied for two hours.

I had all the mares tied too so he had company, which helped. I took a video while Rio was being trimmed. There is a spot in the video where I had to let the camera dangle from it's strap when he leaned on Scot and we had to correct him, but once again, I was complimented on the good nature of this colt.

There were no problems with the feet on any of the horses, no thrush either. Yay! Also, I measured Rio and he now stands 13 hands and 3/4 of an inch- nearly 13.1-so he is on track for the 15.1 that I guesstimated him at.
Today is a big day for Sammi and Janice's dog Kali. I'm taking Sammi up to leave her for a week with the lady who owns Kali's dad and granddad- Sammi will get assessed on sheep for the week, and Kali will get introduced to sheep today. Can you say, photo-op?
After that, my sister is taking me to the Terri Clark concert in Cranbrook, so it's going to be a long and busy day for me, as I have to work this morning too.

Hooligans

Yesterday I kept the horses in their pen because of the heavy rain; this morning for turn-out they were having a blast, Belle even kicked up her heels as she galloped along.

Rio was keeping right up with them- I took some video but it didn't turn out so well.
The tree buds are opening now,

and my Bleeding Heart bush has some flower buds forming too. I noticed the Magnolia trees in town have their flowers almost open too, I'll try to get a shot of them if we get some sunshine.
Just when things seem to be going well, of course, something has to happen- warning, graphic photo below.
When I brought the mares in, Chickory had a gash on her neck that spelled barb wire to me- now, I have my electric fence a foot or more inside the fence line to keep them off the barb wire, but they must have been "horsin' around" for this to happen:

It looks worse than it is, it's just the skin that is cut, not the flesh. I 'm not going to get it stitched; I'm treating it by putting egg white all over it. Egg white is a natural antibiotic and seals the wound like dermaplast does.I've had pretty good success using egg white on open wounds. Tomorrow before I turn the girls out I'll take my electric fence tester and check to make sure the fence is working properly.
On Friday, the Barefoot Hoof care provider that did Velvet and Gussie is coming to do the rest of my horses. I had called my regular farrier as I believe in loyalty but he hasn't returned my calls, so Scott is getting all my business now. He and some others have formed the Canadian Barefoot Horse Association and are working on getting training programs in place. I'm happy that now I know my horses are going to be done the way I want them. In all fairness, Matthew was doing a good job, just needed a little more knowledge.
Here's another website Scott told me about: The Soul of a Horse. I've just started to explore it- looks interesting.

Boots, Beamer, and baby

The barefoot trimmer stopped by today to check the fit on Gussie for Easycare boots. He brought along a set that had been used for 4 years, a size 1, and they fit really well. I'll probably buy a set this summer. So I'm thinking 4 years for a pair of boots that costs about the same as one set of shoes is a pretty good deal. The way I ride, they would probably last about 10 years because I don't get into the mountains that often where the ground is rocky. Here is what they looked like:

I like them because they aren't too clunky, and Gussie didn't mind them at all. I think Beamer probably takes the same size, I'd like a pair for him too. Speaking of Beamer, I've officially retired his winter blanket, and he is taking full advantage of it by rolling in every pile of dirt he can, so its a little difficult to get a nice shiny photo of him, but I did get a couple of him all grubby from rolling.

He was happy to get out in the mares pasture today- I kept the girls in today.

Of course I spent some time with Rio today; he's getting frisky after having turn out yesterday; he's figured out how fun it is to run, and he is pretty quick with firing both heels too!

But most of the time he's well behaved, and he likes his skritches and lovin's- he's daddys boy!

He's working on eating hay too. I'm hoping it won't be raining tomorrow so he can get more turn out time. Gotta exercise those legs you know!

Barefoot trim for the roans

Saturday, the barefoot hoof care provider (Scott) from across the lake came here. Velvet's new owner tracked him down and wanted him to do Velvet, so I figured I'd hire him to do Gussie. I want my current farrier, Matthew, to learn more about this, so I invited him to come over but he didn't make it. While we were waiting for Scott, we spent some time grooming Velvet and I brought Beamer out to show him off (of course!) So I'd like to introduce you to Jessie, Velvet's new owner.

Velvet is just lapping up the lovin' from Jessie!

Yep, she got to ride Beamer too!

When Scott got here, he did Velvet first. I asked how her feet were, and it seems Matthew is on track, the only thing Scott did differently was the way he beveled the hoof wall when he trimmed it. He said Velvet had good balanced feet, and a good start on her sole callous.  And no, I didn't take any photos.

Then he did Gussie; now my plan for Gussie is to keep Scott doing her, while Matthew continues to do my other horses, since I do like to be loyal.  Matthew hasn't been here since we brought Gussie home. I asked Scott about programs in Canada for training and he said there is a new organization, the Canadian Hoof Association, that is working on setting up training programs, some for existing farriers, and some for learning from the beginning. He is going to send me a link to their website, which I will put on my blog. Apparently there are only 5 properly trained barefoot trimmers in Canada. 

With Gussie, this is her first transitional trim. We found something interesting- her left front and left hind both had a bruise on the frog. Huh? Frogs don't bruise! Scott figured it was from last summer or fall, something higher up that had grown down through the frog, and he also thought it may be metabolic rather than an injury.   I don't know what she was eating last year, perhaps grain or high sugar content in the pasture grass. It will be interesting to see if it grows out without any problems; she is starting to shed her frogs. 

Also, he had a fit kit for hoof boots, and we checked it out- she wears a 1.5 Easy Care Glove boot. I intend to get her a pair this summer so I can hit the mountain trails with her. A pair of them is just a little more than the cost of a full set of shoes, and will last a long time. No more shoes on my horses! I'm hoping that Beamer will wear the same size but I think he's probably a 1. He'll get a set too. 

This is the first day of spring, and so far, it's looking good! Now I'm off to clean up my smaller flower garden , and do some pruning on my fruit trees.