Horses N Such Barefoot Trim Blog

I’ve been up to my elbows in work with trimming horses, training horses, and building more fence all the time. Just when you think you really couldn’t take on any more horses…here come a few more.

I’ve been trimming at least 5 days a week, both mornings and evenings. Scott’s been working 3rd shift at his job and I take Scotty to preschool in the morning and take the two girls to trim with me while Scott’s asleep. I still have new clients calling because they’ve heard I do the barefoot trim from someone else I’m already trimming for. I’ve been working a few hard cases recently that have made me really think about how I do my trim and ask more questions from my Yahoo groups. Four founder cases and now a recently diagnosed navicular syndrome mare. Each horse has its own idiocracies that make treating each one a little different from the other but two constants remain…diet has to be carefully monitored and the trim has to be consistent.

One  horse I trim had x-rays done at the vet clinic I frequently consult with. I was able to obtain the slides to study how I could help Tag. The clinic said his pasterns look like someone who has pushed down socks. I wish I could have seen x-rays of this horse before I started trimming him because he actually looks better now than he did a year ago. All four views are of the same hoof. I honestly can’t tell from which angle other than the dorsal palmer view is from. I know one is the dorsal view, one lateral, and one from the heel…but his leg is so messed up its hard tell. And this is actually more aligned than when I first met Tag. He has been lame for a while to the point his owner does not ride him. He is a Dutch Warmblood and less than 10 years old. Beautiful horse though and I’m told that some day if I keep trimming him in the same manner that he may straighten out enough to be sound again some day. I have hope.

Then Scott’s been training more horses. A few of my trim clients have some horses that are needing some refresher or to be started saddle training. Stetson went home about a month ago and we’ve already started on a three year old filly named Breezy. She took to training really well and Scott was up and riding her a few days after we started her. Then it rained a whole bunch and we had to stop the training for about three weeks…but we’ve started riding her again and she’s doing great. She goes up and down our road without incident. I think her owner will be very pleased in a month or so.

Then we just brought home Trick. He is an 11 year old OTTB that needs to be through the Montgomery boot camp. He hasn’t been ridden in a year because he has problems with people being able to mount him. He was trained for racing but never raced. They said he didn’t have the heart. So he was retrained for pleasure. He has a dominant personality and is pretty pushy about getting his way. So he’ll have to be desensitized and then worked to get his respect. I’m hoping we can get through to him and stop his defiant behavior…Scott was already able to half-mount him after working with him for 30 minutes over at Michelle’s place. I have no doubt Scott will be able to get him to accept a rider.

Then I have seven more horses waiting in the wings for training. A 3 year old filly some time this month, a three year old gelding in July, two geldings by the end of summer, Scott grandpa’s filly, another 3 year old filly next spring, and another gelding next spring. We’d love to have to have an indoor arena built so we can train even when the weather’s bad. I’d just like a covering over my 100-ft round pen…Just something to keep it from getting muddy. But I have researched how much money I’d be spending and I cringe at the thought. ah…maybe we’ll win the lottery some day!

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This entry was posted by purdylady on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 12:44 am and is filed under Trimimng posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.