Nearly neat feet

It's been a couple of weeks of adventures for Buddy and I as we are exploring our new domain and finding lots of exciting new places to see. Buddy has, in his usual form, settled in like he has been there all this life and has developed a new bromance with another barefoot horse. His new friend has the most awesome feet, big chunky frogs and beautiful heel first landings - its the stuff of my dreams! Buddy has put on the weight that he lost at the old yard and is starting to look really good again, he is being really spoilt and the new YO gives him plenty of scratches in the right places which he loves.

Buddy's feet are continuing to head in the right direction. We are taking on much more challenging terrain more often now and we have a couple of tricky, stony tracks that we have to negotiate to get out to our longer hacks so it has been interesting to see how Buddy has coped. He is not quite rock crunching but we are getting to the stage where he will occassionally gimp (small stones on concrete) but his stride length is only altering slightly. There is still a difference between his stride length on easier surfaces (grass, tarmac etc) and tricker surfaces (stones) but it is reducing more and more and I am confident that it will come in time. Plus we are still on daytime grazing as I wanted Buddy to be settled before I changed his whole routine at once so that will happen in the next week as well.

We are rapidly approaching our 5 months home from rockley-aversary and we are so nearly there when it comes to Buddy's neat new feet. There is a slither of old stuff left but there is some flare to the inside which I am looking at and am umming and ahhing as to whether I get the farrier to neaten it up. My gut is saying not to touch it for now but if we still have it there in a few weeks then I will re-evaluate. Its so tough as his feet have been totally self trimming since he went to Rockley and I wonder if my drive to get cracking and start jumping again is clouding my view somewhat as I decided when he came home that I wouldn't jump him until the new hoof was through and with the teeny bit thats left I think I'm like an excited child leading up to Christmas and I just want it now!!

Wk 25 vs Wk 32 (LF Lat)

You can see with the lateral shot above just how close we are to having a full new hoof. I'm pleased that we don't seem to have any event lines coming through after the move as there were a lot of changes in his diet that I was worried mught affect his feet but *touches wood* we seem to have been lucky. I'm still rubbish at taking the pictures as his feet always look longer then in real life but we are definitely beefing up behind the more time goes on.

Wk 25 vs Wk 32 (LF sole)

The sole shots I must get better at as I just don't seem to get the same angle twice in a row which is annoying but you can see his frog has beefed up and you can see the flare that is left on the inside and the old hoof that is stretched and rubbish (technical term!). The collateral grooves are wider and deeper which can only mean a thicker sole developing.

We are also approaching our insurance expiry date and I have my vet, Chris Tufnell from Coach House, coming out to have a look at his feet and I am planning to discuss getting some new x-rays and possibly an MRI just to see where we are at and it will be interesting to see if there are any changes or evidence of healing.