Mustang Saga

Today my dad's horse had a farrier appointment so I watched a horse being shod for the first time. (My first time, not the horse's.) Neat stuff. This farrier used to trim my horses. He's a nice guy and a talker. We had some good conversation. Fun to talk shop with someone much more experienced than me, even if I don't agree with him on everything. Actually, I should say especially because we don't agree on everything. More fun to get some new info to chew on than to sit around saying "uh huh, yep" to each other. Some things he says I have to say "You might be right" because I just haven't seen it done but have heard about it (100 mile barefoot endurance races with no trouble), but other things I just don't see the same way. He didn't think it was safe to trot a barefoot horse on gravel. I do that all the time! But I have a horse with nice strong hooves. He also gave me some really cool new information. For every quarter of an inch that the breakover is too far forward it raises the strain on the hoof by 10%. Also, with the hoof mapping taught by Gene O (Natural Balance) this farrier located the coffin bone with accuracy within 1/16 of an inch when using radiographs to verify. These were studies they did at WSU. I'm still not 100% sold on the artificial breakover of a Natural Balance shoe, but it's fascinating stuff nonetheless. Except to my dad. He got bored listening to us talk. How could anyone be bored by a horse's hoof?!?! It's a fascinating, well-engineered design! When it works right, that is.

We talked a lot about how people have bred bad feet on western performance/show horses. Sad. He did tell me that I probably don't have to worry about Tonka going lame because of his crooked feet, since I don't use him all that hard and he has such strong big feet. Hope he's right on that.

My sister was pretty sick today, her third day after chemo and second day after getting the shot that makes her bone marrow start working again (the chemo shuts down the production of red blood cells). Lots of nausea and bone aches. She was able to take half a tranquilizer and finally get some sleep though. It's weird to sit there babysitting my sister...

I trimmed her new horse Rusty's hind feet today after her husband got home. She'd gotten his fronts done before her surgery. He has a pretty gooey case of thrush, so I'll probably take over something to treat that tomorrow. He's going to need some time and good nutrition to grow a better hoof. At his age they may be as good as they get. They don't look horrible by any means, and he doesn't seem sore, but they're not mustang feet. His front feet look nice and big from the top. I haven't looked underneath yet though. Next time I'm over there and not sure what to do with myself I'll probably trim Camria. Her hooves are growing really, really fast. I don't want to trim Levi, her quarter horse. His feet are so incredibly awful. Wry, thin walled, underrun, thin soled. You name it, if it's bad, those hooves have it. And she's pretty particular about how she wants him trimmed. So I'm hoping she has someone else lined up to trim him.

I guess I'm babbling about hooves a lot today. I like hooves. I don't so much like the physical part of trimming them, and the second-guessing myself that I always do when I trim. But hooves are pretty cool. Speaking of which, I really need to finish trimming Cisco tomorrow. Now with my sister's 6 horses as well, I have 44 hooves to trim. I better put them all on a schedule...