BOO-TEE-LICIOUS!!!

Time flies when your having fun. I can't believe the weekend has already come and gone. This weekend found me very busy. Nothing like piling several different things into a couple of days. We had company this weekend , horseback archery friends that came up so they could shoot video for training and form exercises , with the beginner archer in mind. Nothing like a home grown video for entertainment on a Saturday night. It was rather entertaining. There was also an informational seminar that the local vet clinic was putting on. A professor from Washington State University was speaking on lameness and diagnosing various forms of lameness, advancements in technology with MRI in relation to Navicular, etc. Last but not least, we had planned to get the Epic boots fitted with the comfort pads for JB. Since last post and looking at the fit of the Epics along with my vet, we opted to give the comfort pads a go.

While the house was brimming with activity of people coming and going, I managed to sneak away and head to the seminar. It was very informative and gave the audience some new things to keep in mind when looking at a lame horse. I won't go into details but I definitely came away with a lot more tools in the tool box to use in the future when trying to identify a lameness. As a bonus I picked up a few informative laminated cheat sheets that I can post inside my trailer for quick reference for vitals and various other helpful information that evades the mind in the wave of an emergency!!
The most exciting part of the weekend? We finally got the Easyboot Epics on JB all the way around, now fitted with the medium density comfort pads. They worked like a charm. JB was initially tentative walking on the gravel road even with the boots but a few passes back and forth found him lengthening his stride and then suddenly he exploded in a display of airs above ground that would have impressed even the Maestro Nuno! JB literally seemed to leaping for joy, I imagine he felt pretty good. He displayed more animation than I have seen in quite some time. I was tickled pink with the improvement it seemed to make for him. We are officially on our way to possibly being another boot wearin success story! Now, for the ice covered roads.... I think by mid week if the temps stay in the 40's, we might just have that issue licked!!!

First walk with the boots on. You can see it on his face. "I am not so sure about these things....I look ridiculous...Everybody is staring at me...."

Above are the fronts. He is in a size 1. We need to trim just a little off the tongue although they aren't hitting the coronet band, I would like just a little more space there.

Above are his hinds and he is in size 0, again, probably will trim the tongue a bit.

After about 20 minutes walking in the boots and post airs above ground, looking pretty relaxed but observing the pigs next door, wondering, "hmmm.. I wonder if these boots would get enough grip on pavement to chase those things?????"

.....and as for the title of this post, that is what JB wants the other horses to call him now....hehehehehe!!

The Radiographs are In!!

I thought I had better get this on the blog so there are two posts today.

Last Friday we took JB in for follow up xrays of his two front hooves. Over all very good news in the progress we have made since last September. His left front made the most significant improvement with his overall alignment and angle. The right front had the most improvement in his break over and bringing his heel back under him. (sorry , no pics yet, darn weather!)

The vet was quite happy with what we had accomplished. We had definitely been successful at getting his heels back under him better. The not so good news is that JB’s sole depth had not improved much, still between 6-8 mm on both fronts. The vet believes that his sole depth is probably more related to how JB’s naturally built, which surprises me given what he is. It’s hard to know if it’s a genetic thing but I am suspect of that given his breed. It may be more directly related to the fact that the landscape he lives on doesn’t encourage a lot of sole " "toughening". Our property has no rocks. The footing in which he spends the majority of his time on is relatively soft .Our dirt is sandy loam and we also get a lot of moisture in this area. I had to remember that even our other horses, none of whom have any hoof issues and have more than enough sole, can’t exactly be trotted on gravel barefoot without being ouchy. (I keep telling Tom this is a good enough reason to move to a more desert like climate)
So long story short, given the sole depth, we would definitely have to make sure JB has some type of protection, whether it was pads or boots. Overall, the vet felt we had probably gotten JB’s feet as far as his natural hoof form would allow. I am a bit more optimistic on that. I think we can still make a few more improvements and get him just a little more upright with that heel. Hoof growth slows tremendously in the winter so I would imagine we could potentially get greater results when more hoof grows, once spring hits and green grass comes up. The vet also recommended trying a 4 month trial of Farriers Formula to increase growth rate. We'll have to think about that.
There is a great deal of relief in knowing that we are atleast on the right track with this horses feet.. He sure has been a challenge!
I am working on making adjustments to the Epics. I think they might work after all with some inserts.
Now, if the arctic blasts would ever let up, maybe I could actually get to ride JB in the boots and get some conditioning in!!!

Hoof Boots; The Story Continues

I’ll make this brief because frankly, it's getting boring to even post about and I am just so frustrated with the booting situation with my horse. The Epics came in yesterday and while the width fit was much improved from the Glove, the boot itself was coming up way too high on the hoof, rubbing the coronet band. The sides of the boot where the screw holds the gaiter on also seemed to be in a position in which it would rub him. His foot seemed to sit too far down in the boot overall. We tried the 0 size, which was intended for his hinds , and that was way too small in width. Couldn’t even get the latch to go down. To add, JB let me know right away that it was uncomfortable to him by pawing and picking his hoof and holding it up. He definitely didn’t like the way the 0 size was feeling. I didn’t get to the hind feet as we ran out of daylight but tonight I might try the 1’s and insert the pads from his shoeing last fall. They are about ¼ inch in thickness.

It seems to me that this line of boots are simply not made for a small , round wide hoof. While JB’s hoof angle still needs improving, there isn’t much I can do about the size and natural shape of his hoof. Boots may never be an option for him.

All of this may end up being a moot point after Friday. You may recall JB had some serious issues with a sole bruise last August/September that I posted here. http://acerfarm.blogspot.com/2008/11/hoof-beats.html

Last fall, JB was put in therapeutic shoes /pads for 8 weeks, then barefoot for the winter as usual. Over the winter our job was to keep him trimmed and trimmed frequently, focusing on getting his heels back (tendency to slide forward) increase his sole depth, and get a better heel first landing by balancing his weight bearing points.After 6 months, the wanted to xray him again to see progress. Tomorrow is JB’s follow up appt to see where we are with everything. My suspicion is that while we have made several improvements in his feet, we probably need a few more months of concerted effort to get to where he needs to be.

Hoof boots or Bust!!!!

So far, we have not been successful at getting a good fit for JB in the Easy boot Gloves. I have ordered two fit Kit’s and now waiting for my third. I will have tried every combination of boot size available in the fit kit once that third one arrives. I certainly didn’t intend for this boot business to become this complicated, that’s for sure!

In my defense, the second fit kit that was shipped to me was not the fit Kit I thought I had ordered but nonetheless, I am now waiting for the last and final fit kit for the 0.5 to arrive. I am not holding out much hope that these will be a good fit but if I don’t try I will always wonder. To add to the dilemma, if he does happen to fit in the 0.5, they are out of stock until atleast March 20 on that size. Hmph… just my luck , right?


For those of you that are out there that ride horses that don’t have a typical foot and are considering the Glove, Here is what I have found with the fit kits for the Glove for JB:

The Size 1 fit width quite well but was too long.
The size 0 was way too narrow but the length was a good fit.
The size 00.5 was too small everywhere.

The 0.5- might just do the trick.. I will keep you posted on that. I am sure by now, the folks at Easy care think I have lost my mind ….


While this process has been exceedingly frustrating because I can’t ride JB until I have something that will work (and the conditioning clock is ticking for the Oreana ride), this has also has been an extremely educational process.

What does this tell me?

What I am seeing is that these boots seem to be made for a fairly straight walled horse. JB has very round hooves and to add to that they are on the small size (maybe not for his body size but I would much rather have seen him develop a bigger hoof). I will have to get some photos of his feet to post. Maybe over the weekend.

With any length on his toe, JB tends to get ,what I refer to as, platter-like hooves. He also tends to get heels that get a bit under run. In the last 6 months, Tom and I have been quite proactive with his trimming schedule to try to get this under some control. Most of our other horses can go 6-8 weeks in between trims without any trouble. With JB, it’s a different story. We have had to rasp on him every 2-3 weeks to begin to correct some of these natural occurring phenomenons in his feet. As a result, we are seeing some great progress, finally some positive changes in his hoof that previously we weren’t seeing at the 6-8 week intervals. The concavity is starting to develop in his sole, his bars are becoming well defined and beginning to support him. He is developing a much better callous on his toe than we have been able to get in the past and we have been pretty successful in getting his heels to come back where they should be. That last part has been the biggest struggle but I am already seeing him travel at liberty much better. He is reaching much better and is landing much closer to a heel first. We still have room for improvement but baby steps!! Right? I guess the trick with JB is that he needs trimming much more frequent than our other guys. That being said, I suppose I had better learn to get good with a rasp..

Tom has always done the trimming and shoeing on our horses. He had the good fortune to spend quite a bit of time with a natural balance trained farrier many years ago (before natural balance was the “thing”) and has used it ever since on all of our horses. So why did we run into so many troubles with JB’s feet. Over the last several months we have been pouring over our various Ovincek books, videos , notes, and other resources related to natural balance trimming, trying to figure out if we had been doing something wrong. Is there something different that we were missing? The one definitive difference that we could come up with was that there wasn’t enough focus on trim of the heel. Tom tended to be bit conservative with taking heel which could have been causing too much length An 1/8 of an inch is a lot on a small hoof like JB’s..Other than that, there isn’t much that changed in how he was trimming versus how he is trimming today with JB. We have been more consistent with the trimming schedule which seems to be making a big difference for JB.

One other possibility I could attribute all of this to might be during the very early stages of our conditioning start up last year, I was riding JB barefoot. We were only going on slow easy rides but much of it was on hard, sometimes gravely ground. My guess is that he got sore heels or soles at that time. While it was only a couple of weeks of riding him barefoot before I put shoes on him, maybe the damage had already been set in motion. Then, after we put shoes on him, he ended up then getting a stone bruise during our first limited distance and it just escalated from there.

It anever ceases to amaze me that when you have horses, it’s a constant learning adventure. Since I can’t go back in time and can only look to the horizons ahead I will try on the 0.5 , see if that works and if not, move on to the next thing. Feeling a bit pressed for time in sorting all of this hoof protection out, I have also gone ahead and sized JB for the Easy Care Epic boot. They should be here any day. I am not giving up yet on keeping him barefoot! I considered the Easy Boot Bare but was told that the bare was the most difficult boot in the Easy care line up to put on due to it being very stiff. I didn’t really want to deal with that. On the other hand, the Epic, while still stiff, is less so than the bare. It seems like maybe the Epics might work better for JB. At this point, I have nothing to lose!

Easy Boot Gloves- Round Two..

Round 2- Easy Boot Glove

Based on the measurements I took of JB’s feet prior to ordering the Fit Kit from Easy Care, he calculated out to approx 117 mm. (4 5/8 for the fronts and 4 ½ on the hinds). A size 1.5 Fit kit should have been the ticket. Included in that kit are size 1, size 1.5 and size 2 boot to give the best possible fit.

Thursday night was fit kit night at Acer Farm. Since I wanted the best possible fit , and JB was due for his two week touch up with the rasp anyways, Tom gave him a pedicure before slipping on the ruby slippers . I knew the 2 was definitely out just looking at it. The 1.5 also proved to be too big so last chance was the 1.0. Much to my disappointment, it was also too big for the Peanut. The good news was that the shape of JB’s feet seemed to work well with the glove. We just had to get a smaller size boot.

I wondered how could these be so off in the size when we carefully measured? I know JB has small feet but I never imagined they were this small!! We remeasured and it was exactly the same numbers as previous.

Just for fun and to have a comparison, I pulled Rebel out of the pasture, who was also freshly trimmed up and tried the boots on him. He has what I would consider a more “normal” sized hoof. I tried on the 1.5 on his feet and found these were also too big on him as well. I was surprised by that. The size 1 did appear to be a better fit, but still not as snug of a fit as the sizing instructions suggests it should be. I could see that they would not stay on well. The V on the front of the boot was not expanding much and the picture with the instructions pamphlet showed a much more distinct separation of the “V” than what the boot was doing on Rebel’s hoof. Rebel also has a bit of a wing on the outside of his front hoof that we are slowly working on improving so this seemed to be causing a bit of a poor fit. I will keep that fit kit for two more weeks and after another trim, see if the size 1 boot works any better. If not, I could see him potentially dropping down to a size 0.

Ok, so maybe my measurements weren’t off. Maybe the sizing charts for these boots are a bit on the generous side? So, today I ordered the size “0” kit which will include 0.5, 0, 00.5 size boots . These sizes should reveal better fitting results. I also talked to Marci at Easy Care about my fitting woes. She double checked my measurement conversion to millimeters and came up with the same numbers. She was also puzzled as to why I did not get a better fit. Guess JB really is my misfit!!

Well, I am not sure how other folks are doing out there with the fit kits but I am entering round two and keeping my fingers crossed that one of the boots in the smaller kit will do the trick for JB!

EASY CARE FIT KIT ARRIVED

The fit kit I ordered for the Easy boot glove arrived today and I was quite happy to see it.It included three sample boot sizes based off of the measurements I took of JB's feet. He measured as a 1.5 so in the kit, they send a 1, 1.5 and a 2 for trying on. There is a lot weighing on these boots at this point, JB's conditioning schedule for one. I can't ride JB on the road until I either get him in boots or if that doesn't work, I will have to go back to pads and shoes.

Keep your fingers crossed that these will work with his hoof shape and I won't have to go the shoe route.

Now you all know what I will be doing just as soon as I can be home in time to have some decent light!!



I will keep you posted!

Monday Night Foot Measuring...

Do you ride bare?


Barefoot that is...I’ve been considering it since last fall for JB when he had all of his foot issues. To be honest, I kind of fought the idea at first. It just seemed like so many people were jumping on the band wagon just to jump on the bandwagon and I really try to resist the urge to become a lemming like humans seem to be prone to do. I wasn’t convinced at first that it would be a fit for JB but given his year in 2008, I knew I had to explore some other options. I guess I am a lemming afterall, but it seems the most logical solution at this point. Many serious endurance riders are having excellent results.

I was looking at the Renegades but for 2009 , Easy Care has the makings of a big leap for the Easy Boot product with three new products. The price for the Easy Care product is also more aligned with my budget as well. The new boots are still warm from the desert trail testing and the buzz about them is encouraging. The results seem impressive. If you follow the news on the blog on Easy Care’s website, you probably have heard about it already. If not I have pasted in the link further down.
The Glove ,the Glue On and the Edge are the new models. At this point, I am interested in the Glove model. The explanation of the name goes without saying… but yes, they are supposed to fit like a glove. They are also claiming they are a lot easier to put on the hoof as well. I will have to report back on that. Both the Edge and the Glove are pretty low profile with updates to the gaiter and the binding.

There is one little glitch. With the glove and the glue on, there is a a new process to fitting these redesigned boots. You now have to purchase a Fit Kit to determine the right size boot for your horse and the sizes are in millimeters so you have to do some math too!

Read about the fitting process here and the posts about the testing for each boot style.

http://easycareinc.typepad.com/from_the_horses_mouth/easycare-fit-kit/

It’s a little extra work and a little more of the green stuff for sizing, but worth it in order to get the correct size boot. The Fit Kit comes with three boot sizes to try on your horse. You get to keep the kit for 30 days and then return it. At that time you can place your order for your boot.

Monday night, Tom and I scratched the ice and mud away from JB's feet in the glow of a flashlight to measure his feet according to the instructions. JB measurements were 4 5/8 on the front and about 4 ¾ so he needed a 1.5 size Fit Kit according to the chart. In the kit, I will receive a size 1, 1.5 and 2 to try on him. If your horses front and back feet are substantially different in size, you may find you have to order two fit kits. Luckily, I didn't have to.

Today was the first day they were allowing orders to be placed. When I called to order the fit kits the Easy Care rep indicated that the Fit Kit’s were on order and that they hoped to receive their shipment of FitKit’s next week. So, it will be about two weeks before I receive my FitKit. I was hoping I could get JB set up with boots sooner but atleast we are getting closer, hopefully, to resolving his foot problems.

Anyone else out there ordering these? If so, you might consider getting your order in soon. I have a feeling these boots might really take off and then there may be a waiting list.

Hoof Beats

Saturdays ride was bittersweet for me. I knew it would be my last time for a while that I would be able to take a jaunt up the gravel road with JB.

As a result, his conditioning will be limited going forward, atleast for a few months. Today , his EDSS shoes and pads finally do come off for the winter. I made Tom hold off until the very last possible minute, not wanting my riding to be limited to soft footing.

His EDSS shoes and pads have been on since September 15th. It is highly likely that once they are off, his sole has likely softened and he will be tender once again but only for a few days until he adjusts.I am keeping my fingers crossed that the pads did their job and gave him the time needed for the sole bruise to heal once and for all.

Over the next several months, Tom will trim JB using natural balance hoof care methods taught by Gene Ovnicek. Tom learned these methods years ago (Gene is from this very part of the contry in fact) and has followed these trimming methods for his own horses all this time. With JB, atleast initially the focus will be on getting his sole callus re-developed after his stint with pads.

In addition, we hope to help JB to develop thicker sole depth using these methods. This will be one piece of the hoof anatomy that will help keep him from becoming sore. JB has a bit of deformity in his front right hoof and it tends to to want to shape out like platters with under slung heels. With frequent trimming, getting the callus back, increasing his sole depth, and working to keep his hoof proportions correct, we hope to get JB's feet backto the point where he no longer has to be so sensitive. It will be a bit of an uphill battle since the footing he lives in is soft. We have very few rocks , if any, and when it rains, we get instant mud. We typically have a fairly wet weather pattern. If only for the desert!!

No hoof , no horse as they say. If I obsess over JB's feet for the next several months, just ignore me. We have to get his feet in top condition.

This endurance career I have embarked upon with him depends on it.