In the photos above you can see that this pony is in obvious pain and suffering from serious chronic founder on all four feet. When she was led up to the trimming area she moved painstakingly slow and had enormous trouble turning in a circle. This pony just arrived at a new home a few days earlier to be placed under strict diet and lifestyle management. This was her first set up trim by professional barefoot trimmers. In looking at the state of the soles and the frogs, my students and I elected to clean up the dead material in the frog and sole area and lower the heels by about 1/4 of an inch and remove about the same or even about 1/2 an inch of dead protruding sole material. We brought the heels right back to the heel butresses as seen in the solar shot and cleaned up the bar and soles in the seats of the corns. We elected to not take much more than this as her frogs were miserably weak and badly infected with thrush from having such high and contracted heels for so long.
The flared and disconnected walls were removed to relieve mechanical pressure on the laminae and about 1/8th of an inch of wall around the quarters and toward to toes were left standing for support as the pony was still in a foundered state and wasn't ready to have all the sole material removed. It was advised to the owner that the pony go on a 3 week trim cycle and have a serious thrush treatment plan started immediately. For a case like this, daily soaking in a 50/50 solution of apple cider vinegar and warm water solution, followed by allowing the hooves to thoroughly dry out and packing the frogs with an anti-thrush remedy such as Pete Ramey's suggestion of 1/2 Athlete's foot cream and 1/2 triple antibiotic cream such as Polysporin should help immensely. Changing the footing to a nice sandy or pea gravel area where the pony is turned out and daily hand walking will round out this ponies treatment plan. The pony was already housed on soft ground, so boots with pads were not necessarily recommended.
After we were finished trimming the pony, she was walked up and down the barn isle and it was astounding the way she was moving on concrete in a happy extended walk! The pain in her turns was almost immediately alleviated. A day later I received this email from the pony's owner:
"Now, for the great news that I would like for you to pass on your students, if you don't mind……. The paint pony was RUNNING around in the field tonight with the other horse. It was beautiful and amazing! She was taking shorter strides than she might if she had better hooves, but she ran around with the herd and seemed to be really happy. It was fantastic to witness that. So Thank-you to you all for the great job!"
It was explained to the owner and the students though that the strict diet and turnout regimen was almost MORE important to this pony's recovery than our trimming was. Only without constant laminitic episodes caused by diet, drugs, lack of exercise will this pony make a full recovery to a being a happy and sound animal. |
