Trim #3: Great Success!

I might even be brave enough to post pictures this time.

Today was trim #3 for Cherry and me. I must say, today's trim went MUCH smoother and easier than the last two. Possibly because I didn't have to use the nippers and was able to rasp, scrape, and cut everything. It took 1.5 hours start to finish, and pony is sounder and moving even better than ever. Hooray!

I made some changes in my method this time around. Like I said, I didn't use the nippers, I only used the rasp and hoof knife. It's rained a little here recently, so Cherry's feet have softened up a tad, which made it possible for me to use the hoof knife.

I started by scraping away all the chalky sole with the knife. While doing this, I also cut away a bit of the frogs. They were sloughing off a layer, and I helped them along and scraped out a bit of fungus too. As I removed the chalky sole, I noticed that the bars of her hooves were way too long and starting to fold over.

Carefully I cut away some of the bars, and found underneath them a TON of nasty, chalky sole just begging to come out. Smelled lovely, let me tell you! Once I got the worst of the folded bar trimmed away, I finished scraping out the sole.

Sole scraped, bars trimmed a little and frog trimmed, I started on the hoof wall. I rasped it at a 45 degree angle to the plane of the sole. In the areas where the white line is still stretched I rasped it all the way down to the sole so no hoof wall contacted the ground there. This will give the lamina a chance to grow in tight without being pulled apart as the flare grows out. Where the white line was tight, I rasped only to the water line, or halfway to the sole.

The heels were next. Rasped one and then the other. Before I'd tried to do them at the same time, rasping across, but that didn't work out so well. Much easier to do one and then do the other to match it!

After that, I put her hoof up on the stand and smoothed the outside of the beveled edge I'd previously made with my 45 degree angle rasping. I didn't file the outside of her hoof wall any more than that. Just smoothed the edge of the mustang role.

Last time I filed too high up the outside of the hoof wall. She didn't go lame, but she lost a bit of the concavity that was forming and didn't improve on the gravel at all. So I learned, and this time only filed about 1/2" up, and only enough to smooth that edge.

I must say, this is the best her feet have looked in a LONG time! I'm SO HAPPY with the results of this trim. I think I'm really starting to get a feel for what I'm doing. There's much to learn yet, but this is the first trim I feel really good about.

Great success!!!!!