Farrier visit June 15, 2009

(Pictured: Buttercup ready for her regular "close up" with the camera; she gets more pics taken of her than a super model)

Last week we had two breakthroughs with Buttercup's hooves: 1) she is no longer in the "rebalancing" stage of her hoof rehab, which means her lamina will heal faster; and 2) she grew a microscopic, smidgen of a heel!

All exciting news. I've also started to use turpentine to help strengthen her soles and seem to be having really good results. Her crack is also looking like it really wants to come together (a sure fire sign her laminae is healing and her hoofwall is in the right spot). 

Right front:

Left front:

(see that heel growing?!?!)

Front view:

Not sure if you can see but that crack is actually very, very shallow right now. She's also standing a little off kilter.

In this front view, notice her hooves still lack symmetrical balance. We're getting there. We had to fix her hoof angle, start growing some heel and a few other things. But now we can start focusing on getting her better balanced.

That reminds me: my farrier is still suspecting we aren't getting adequate blood flow to her hooves. I'm going to investigate this further and figure out possible avenues to explore. If you have any information on this, I'd love to hear it.

By the way, notice the bell boots? We've gone to double bell boots to prevent any more shoes being pulled. We simply can't afford to lose any more hoof to forging.