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!!

Dynamic Duo

Yesterday was the appointment I'd been looking forward to, where my farrier and my vet got to have a forced hangout session. If you remember, my farrier had already come out to bring his toes back and things had been seeming a little better. 

Enjoy this weirdly cropped photos of TC and the
two sprinklers I got for him

He's like... are you serious?

The vet arrived first and the first thing I had her do was pull blood for a metabolic panel. He's gained a lot of weight on not a lot of food in the past year, so I want to make sure that we catch anything we need to catch. 

Then, we took x-rays of his feet, this time she also did views from the front to check his balance. When my farrier arrived, we had just been talking about how the balance looked much better in his feet than the previous x-rays. We spent time comparing each one to the previous x-rays and noted that his left front was worse than his right, but that both left and right were better now after he got re-shod. 

We then discussed next steps for his feet - TC didn't have quite enough foot to take any more off and one recommendation that my vet brought up was putting frog support pads on him. This would allow his heels to grow, which is what we need to encourage for his angles to get even better. My farrier had an example pad of a 3D printed pad she's wanting to use for these cases. It has a hole in the pad right behind the toe, meaning that the horse's hoof can dry out a bit easier.

This one he started out skeptical of as well

Considering it might be okay

My farrier said that basically TC's pasture is the worst possible scenario for his feet. The soil is clay out there, so in the winter its squelchy mud that balls up in their feet and then dries, putting a ton of pressure on the sole. If we don't pick all the horses' feet out all the time, we risk their feet basically caving in on themselves. Then in the summer, because in California we have an insane dry season where it doesn't rain from April through November, the ground hardens up to the point where large cracks form. 

AND, to add insult to injury, TC loves water so so much, that if it's hot, he will play in his water bucket. To the point where I had to move one bucket away from the barn because he'd flood his shavings (we call this his chaos bucket) AND I got him a big bucket that I fill up from time to time out in his pasture so he can waste well water (we call this his XL chaos bucket). But because he has pads on (necessary to keep his feet comfortable on the hard ground), it means that his feet get wet 2-3x per week and then don't necessarily dry out enough. 

So we think that these frog support pads will help with that. And I might need to take away at least his XL chaos bucket, maybe even find a way to keep him from playing in his other bucket. I feel bad considering that though, he loves it so much. 

Then it ended up being his favorite

Just a happy boy and his flower sprinkler

In addition to the feet, I figured I had a vet and an x-ray machine on the property, so I had her x-ray his hocks as well. The other vet thought he had good range of motion and didn't think that the hocks were involved at all. But he's 14 years old and I just figured that we should take a look. 

I'm glad we did, because his joints do seem pretty good for his age, but there was enough remodeling where she thought that injections would help him out. We also saw some mild remodeling in his coffin joint and pastern joints. I asked her, if money were no object and we wanted to give him the best chance to come back, what would she inject? 

She said that she'd inject all three of those joints with a biologic (she quoted me Alpha2P?), that this could give him a boost through rehab. I agreed, but she wanted to wait until she got back his metabolic panel, plus I don't think she had all her stuff there. So I asked her to give me a quote for it, which she sent last night. 

He was surprisingly gentle with it

He just wanted to hold his nose on it

Oh no, man down!

I do feel better I think. We are getting his new pads on in early October and sometime in October the vet is coming back out for all the horses' dentals, so I might consider doing the joint injections and maybe look at his front feet again then. Or I'm considering taking him offsite for the injections, my barn is clean but a clinic will likely be cleaner. Plus why not get a fifth vet involved?

My goal is to just throw everything at him for the next 12 months, whatever I think will bring this horse back, let's do it - special shoes? sure, injections? go for it, bodywork? absolutely. Because the alternative is full retirement soooo we may as well try everything one last time. Maybe this winter will be the first one I fall off of him because he feels so good! I'd be fine with that honestly. 

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!

Educational Opportunities

I spent from Tuesday through Friday morning of last week at a conference. My initial plan was to set up my blog on Sunday for the whole week, but my last post went over why that wasn't something I could do. I thought I'd have time at the conference, but not so much because I turn into a social butterfly at these things.

The conference was AMAZING, it's my favorite one. I felt less than prepared for my presentation due to just switching jobs and kind of having to scramble once at the conference to add things to the presentation (luckily we presented late in the afternoon on the second day so we had time). All of the sessions were super informative, and I think that the longer I spend in the field, the more I get out of the sessions.

Also conferences have the best food, this was a custom mac
and cheese station

Mine was quite unhealthy

The most fun was seeing people I don't get to see very often. I obviously immediately reconnected with my former coworkers. We spent a good amount of the conference together, including going out on Wednesday and Thursday together (along with some other friends). I made a ton of new networking connections and touched base with people I've known for a while. A bunch of new ideas cropped up for how to collaborate with other colleges and stuff I'm excited to take back to work.

Friday morning I was a bit hungover, having had a heavy discussion with my former boss (who is now merely an amazing mentor) the night before and then deciding that drinking alcohol, which I rarely do, was a good way to loosen up from that. I stayed up way too late bonding with my former coworker (who is now one of my good friends) and ended up going to bed around 1am to get up at 6am for my flight. I got about four total hours of sleep because I kept waking up feeling sick.

My journey back was real interesting but it was mostly because a) I kept making plans for the possibility of needing to throw up when the mode of transportation got bumpy (my driver to the airport was aggressive) and b) I got lost a few times in two airports I'd never been in.

I finally made it home and decided to decompress for an hour, hanging out with my cat and trying to get myself to eat.

Dinner one night

Peony, Andy, and L were coming over (more on that later) so we could go to an important event (more on that later), so I decided that I needed to go try to ride real quick so I could shower and get ready. TC hadn't been ridden since Monday and before then had a couple days off for rain so he's basically had a bit of a vacation. Peony very kindly fed him while I was gone and I got out there to see he was bright and excited to see me. I took note that all of his legs looked normal (I always expect one to blow the fuck up) and that he needed to be brushed.

I took him out, passing the farrier who was packing up, and put him in the cross ties. I took my time brushing him, getting all the hair off- he's so much lighter this year!

I then glanced down at his left hind and immediately ran outside to see that the farrier had left. Seems like TC had spooked his shoe half way off. This has happened several times before, probably happens every six months, where TC startles by throwing his legs sideways and he sheers a shoe right off.

I picked it up and saw that only half the nails had dislodged and were now poking into his hoof, cool. I ran around the barn asking people if they had anything to take shoes off with, messaging Peony FRANTICALLY asking for her farrier's number (who is in Oregon for the week but coming to put the shoe back on tomorrow), and trying to pull at the shoe a bit. A friend at the barn showed up and I asked her if she had anything, she had nippers but I really needed a rasp to take the nails down on the other side. No dice.

So much fun

Peony was on it though. She sent me "Andy just watched a shoe removal video. He said we can improvise" and I ran up to my house to get ready for the event while they made their way out there.

Andy to the rescue, for sure, they brought a rasp, which we used to file down the clinches to get the nail straight, then we dislodged the shoe a bit with the nippers, and then he yanked each nail out with pliers. Shoe came off and the foot looks normal and the shoe honestly could get tacked right back on, it's totally normal looking. Because TC was barefoot for so long, I'm not worried about riding him like this, the ground is still really soft from the rain. But I ran out of time for Friday so I fed him grain, told him to stop spooking his damn shoes off, and we headed back to my house to get dressed and drive out.

Then it was time to go home

I'm so grateful for friends like these who come to rescue me! I owe them big time! And I think I'm going to be buying a few tools to have laying around just in case this happens again so I'm not nearly so frantic when it does happen... And we'll see what new farrier thinks of possibly putting quarter clips on those back feet! He has them on the front.

WW: TC Has Big Feet

When Nicole met TC, one of the first things she asked me was why I hadn't dedicated an entire post to TC's big feet. And I don't know. So this post is for you, Nicole.

For the record, TC does have big feet, but they are still a standard shoe size (4). He doesn't need any special shoes or anything. I've grown accustomed to them so I think their normal sized and that all the other horses around have tiny feet.

This is TC's shoe next to my mom's pony (same
farrier) 

This is TC's right front foot after he was wet so
the shavings stuck to it. There's no reference
here but trust me, it's a big foot.

TC's feet are bigger than my feet are. My feet
are a size 7 by the way. 

Wasn't going to pick his feet for this, sorry

His back feet are also big

When TC lost a shoe this summer. I wear a size
7-7.5 glove