Trim #4

On Sunday I trimmed Cherry's hooves.

They look great. However, she's a bit tender, and I don't know quite why. Hard surfaces (concrete, gravel) are ouchie for her, but her paddock and the grass are not. She's perfectly sound out in the field, but gets gimpy on the gravel driveway and the concrete barn isle.

I'm trying to figure out why. I took off hardly any sole. Just scraped out the flakey stuff from the seat of the corn. On a good note, her heels want to come down now! Lots of dead sole at the corn this time!

From what (little) I know, there's two possibilities for why she's tender. One is that I accidentally rasped a bit of toe callous off when I was rasping her heels. It didn't look like much, but maybe it made a difference. The second possibility is that I took off too much hoof wall. Which is true, I did. I'm still fixing those horrible flares and white line separation, and I did go a trifle overboard. I was careful not to rasp too far up the outside of the hoof wall, but maybe I did in my efforts to remove wall contact with the ground in the problem areas.

I guess I'll just have to see how it grows out. I'm happy to say that the white line separation is now confined to problem spots instead of being present around the whole hoof. Hooray! The bars are also starting to stand up straight. The were badly folded over, so I've been working to fix that too. Another awesome thing is that those awful stress lines are growing out, and I've figured out what's been causing them. It was the damn farrier himself! Every trim had an associated stress line, which makes sense considering she was LAME after them! That's pretty stressful for the hoof, I'd say. Since I've been trimming, no new ones have formed. Great success! Though there might be one from this last trim. This is the most tender she's been after a trim with me.

This time I waited only 2 weeks since the last trim. There was still an amazing amount of hoof wall growth. I couldn't believe it had only been two weeks. I'm hopeful that her hoof wall will grow right back and, um, sort of "fill in the gaps" of where I took too much off. I'm not sure when the next trim will be, I'll check her in a couple weeks, but she may be able to go a little longer this time.

Next trim I will definitely be more conservative. Less rasping of the hoof wall, except in the places where the white line is a gaping hole. I'm also going to "shape" her sole a little bit more. By that I mean just cut a strip off around her frog. She doesn't grow much sole, but grows tons of wall, including heels and bars.

I feel bad for making her tender, but I'm comforted in the fact that her paddock is soft dirt, so she isn't in discomfort. Hmmm, maybe that's part of our problem. Perhaps more work in the outdoor arena would help. The footing in there is awful, kind of a fine gravel with lots of rocks scattered about. Something to ponder, though I won't be going in there until she's comfortable on the concrete again.