New Shoes & First Rides

TC saw his farrier yesterday and got his new fancy 3D printed pads on! His feet definitely look better and I'm glad that we made this change. 

The pads he was in previously were just flat pads. They were good enough to protect his soles from the hard ground, but outside of that didn't do much for him. These new pads are frog support pads, which should allow him to grow a bit more heel, since we've done as much as we can with the trim to correct his angles. They also have holes, both in the frog area where my farrier put composite to hold the pads on, and in the toe/sole area to allow for better drying. 

Aren't they cool??

The drying is important because one theory my farrier has is that in the summer when it's super dry and hard, he plays in his water and his feet get soaked and soft, and then he pounds on them, which causes them to somewhat disintegrate. So we addressed both of these issues with these new pads!

My farrier is the tiniest bit worried about leaving his heels a little more curved under than normal. Her belief is that she'd rather leave a short but strong heel versus a longer heel that is at risk of being underrun. However, she will see him again in 4 weeks and I am to let her know if he suddenly says no thank you to his new trim/shoes. 

Updated feet pics

Definitely better than before

I took him out afterwards (since he's never had issues after the farrier comes) and actually decided to ride him. I'd been really on the fence about riding, wanting him to gain more strength first and even considering getting him back to full work before trying. But on Sunday I decided that I wanted to get a baseline, even if it meant feeling discouraged because not much had changed. 

I'd taken him out just in the halter because I was convinced he'd say no to doing very much, so I was prepared to longe him. Instead, he was pretty happy to work! I think he'd rather be ridden than longed, so on Tuesday after he got shod, I decided to fully tack him up with the bridle and everything. 

He's so weird

The first really good sign was that he wanted to walk down the road! I haven't wanted to after the initial vet visit because of the mechanical laminitis he'd shown and he honestly hadn't been asking. I kept him on the softer ground and then when we turned onto the paved part of the road, I asked him to turn around. He was bummed, but I really want to slowly introduce that back just in case the road walking was the cause of some of his foot issues. Juggling all these changes has been a challenge, but I really want to be a good experimenter here. 

We're doing 6 x 30 second trot sets each direction for a total of 6 minutes of trot. In between, we are walking for 30 seconds. It's enough to get him breathing a little hard and a little sweaty, but he's able to hold his posture the entire time which is the most important part. I think I'm seeing good changes in his posture too! But I could be making that up. 

Undersaddle, I can tell it's a little harder for him, but he was still very willing to do the work! Like, I haven't felt him willingly trot from walk in a while. He said yes every time I asked him to trot and had really quite good quality transitions both up AND down. In the past, he'd balk into the upward transition (sometimes shifting weight sideways to get out of it) and he'd slam on the brakes at any hint of a downward transition. 

And again, in the trot, I couldn't feel a balk. I could feel a little weakness or a little hesitation to continue, but it felt more strength related or cardio related (and him knowing our 30 second routine + my alarm dings). And if I asked him to keep going, he never slammed on the brakes. 

I tried keeping him clean after hosing
him down and I failed

It was so fun too, playing with the connection and the transitions. I'm riding in the TCS, which gives me limited stability, so my mantra is to just keep it slow, active, and straight in the neck. If I tell myself to keep it slow, I can really focus on maintaining the tempo rather than rushing him like we had gotten to before. Active mostly meaning that I don't have to bother him about continuing to move forward. And straight in the neck because he gets a little folded at the base of his neck careening it inward. 

He's a little better in the contact tracking right than left, and a little straighter left than right. I think my goal through this rehab is to really address those things. We certainly have the time. 

The contact especially is something we just haven't worked on in a super long time. He kind of floats above my hand tracking left and if I ask him to really take my hand, he wants to offer me other things instead, like bending too much. To the right, he gets a little passage-y (in a bad way) if I ask him for anything beyond what he's offering. 

Then in walk, the contact is really funny, it seems to shut him way down, where if he's on a loose rein, we get a pretty stellar walk, but on the contact he slows his tempo down quite a lot. He's kind of always been like that, but I want to work on it given the amount of walk we're going to be doing. Hopefully by the end of winter he'll be much more confident in the contact at the walk. I think it's mostly a strength issue, he has a humongous walk and not a lot of topline right now. 

I ran out of TC photos so here are some pictures I
took at a swamp I went to recently

By the end of our trot sets, he was actually really forward and sensitive in trot! Which I think is another good piece of the puzzle for me. In the past, he'd sometimes get a little explosive at the end of rides, like he'd start out balking and then at some point, he would just explode and then be completely tight and anxious for the rest of the ride. Probably because something was hurting and he was finally like OKAY FINE I WILL DO IT and then was distraught. 

This was one of the first times in a while where I felt like I had him forward because he was really ON vs him being forward due to the aftermath of an explosion. So I think now that I've addressed a lot of his pain (still planning on doing bodywork and injections, but clearly the feet were a big source of discomfort), a big piece of the puzzle will be to get him fitter than I had him in the past. It clearly takes some time for him to warm up and become a little more sensitized to the aids. By the time I had him in a place where I thought we could really do something yesterday, we were done with the ride. Which is totally fine for where we are right now. And probably shows him that when he becomes more forward, we end our ride. 

I saw three new birds there though!

So lots of things to consider as we continue on this rehab attempt! I'm feeling hopeful, but I'm also fully acknowledging that this is right around the time of year where things start to go better for us. I'm going to maintain that we will not know whether this horse is truly back to his old self until I'm able to ride him through next summer without balking. Fingers crossed though!!