Initial Trim & Starting Rehab

TC doesn't see my new forced dynamic duo farrier x vet until the 18th, but my farrier was kind enough to offer to come out on yesterday to at least trim and reset his front shoes further back to get him started/alleviate some of the discomfort. 

I don't go to a lot of TC's farrier appointments because he's a clown and thinks that I'm there to be his audience and he ignores his task (being good for the farrier) in order to focus on being entertaining to me (I am not entertained). He was super rude and she told me that he's normally very good for her. I apologized. 

But we did get the fronts done and while my farrier has some reservations about how drastic the vet wants his trim to be, I was super happy with the changes she made. It was a very good start and his feet look much more balanced! 

I know everyone is just here for the
feet pics

I don't have a before handy, but I'll
find one eventually, these are the afters

She did trim off a bit of his toe where the vet had said he had too much sole, then she set the shoes much further back, with the toe of the shoe back to his white line. She left the rolled toe rather than switching to a rocker toe, and she wanted to keep his pads on since she felt like he could use the extra support since we were taking off more sole. I'm honestly fine with him staying in pads, it's a lot easier to deal with over winter with our clay-like soil! 

TC seemed very happy with the changes, the moment the trim was done (before the shoes were put back on), he yawned three separate times. It's taken a long time for me to get TC to yawn in general, since his goal in life is to entertain people and not to focus on his own body. But now he's much happier expressing himself (after years of bodywork trying to fix his issues). Still, I think it's unusual during a farrier appointment to yawn. 

When she set the shoes back, he also yawned a few more times. I also obsessively watched the way he was standing and could absolutely convince myself he was standing better on his front feet. 

Again I don't have a before handy, but he used to
stand a lot more like an elephant on a ball

She headed out and I put TC back for a bit to eat lunch (Riot, my dad's now retired horse, needs antihistamines at lunch, so all the other horses get the tiniest bit of grain at lunch) and chill. I stared at him for about an hour just in his paddock while doing some barn chores. Again, I could convince myself he was standing better and that his shoulders were sitting better, but I'm really grasping at straws here. 

I got him out later and he was really good to groom. For years now, but especially in the last couple of years, TC has always twisted around and held his right hind leg (usually, sometimes also his left) up to try to get me to scratch his butt/leg/belly. I've never been able to quite get the spot he is asking for, and after doing a lot of reading, I had figured that he had sciatica or something similar. He shows some nerve stuff in both front (biting at his shoulders and legs) and hind (the aforementioned leg lifting). 

But he didn't give me any leg lifts! That's not *entirely* unusual, we do have good days where he doesn't do it, but it was a straw I was willing to snatch for my straw collection. 

He's such a ham

I took him out to the arena and he seemed fine walking on the hard ground, I couldn't remember exactly how he had walked the day before but I could convince myself it was better. In the arena we did our typical routine - I let him loose to roll, then I put the halter back on and we do his rehab. 

He yawned a bunch when he got up from rolling (unusual), then walked over to the longe whip and was wobbling his nose on it. Previously, his ground work included some liberty work, where I'd grab the whip and we'd do some basic exercises, mostly transitions but sometimes some of his tricks, which include a shockingly decent piaffe at liberty and his version of passage (which he only does in one direction and it's kinda bad, but I wouldn't tell him that). Anyway, it was cute that he went over to the longe whip, but we're doing the vet's boring rehab plan, sorry TC. 

The rehab is kind of a combination of some of the thoracic sling work that I'd done previously combined with the work I'd been doing all year. So we've been doing about 20 minutes in the arena (I'll work up to more now that his feet are a bit better) of just walking and some exercises:

- Figure-8 Bars (one of Jec's 55 corrective exercises)

- Straddle pole (another one of Jec's)

- Rein back over pole (Jec's)

- Reining back with neck down

- Walking with neck down

He wants us to also do some lateral work, but I'm uncertain I want to do that just yet, he has historically used the lateral work to get away from really moving through his back/body. It's just too easy for him to fold his noodly friesian neck in hand. Undersaddle I can at least keep him straighter. 

Endless rehab for this guy

Generally, I'm feeling WAY better. I'm a little concerned that my farrier has a little bit of a disagreement with the vet, but I'm also aware that they didn't speak, so there's a very good chance that what I relayed to her sounded much more drastic than it actually was. I figure that we'll see what my local vet thinks next Thursday, and then I'll send the final x-rays to my lameness vet and see what he thinks. I'm okay with it taking a little bit of time, especially with how TC responded to the trim yesterday. 

I don't think I'm going to be happy with getting him 80% of the way there by next year, but if we need to take things a tiny bit slower in the beginning to make sure that we aren't doing too much, I'm okay with that. I just want him to feel better!