9/14 hoof trim

My trimmer came out today to get everyone evened back up, and to fit Saga and Red for boots for hunt season. Saga wore his original Easyboots to hunt last week and I was pretty surprised that they stayed on, since we've had problems with them before. Reddums hunted barefoot but can be footy on the bigger rocks we have around home, so I wanted to get a pair of boots for him too.

First up was Cash. He's always had a long toe and we are working on that, but his heels seem pretty reasonable. Here he is before...

... and after. Still long, but he's comfortable on all surfaces, at least at a walk. Not bad for a 23 year-old!

Next up was Saga. This is the RF after being trimmed. Yes, his soles look ugggg-leee... they are sloughing off but are still really attached. We were concerned that if we took any sole off, it would affect his concavity, so we decided to leave it on. I'm to do light road work with him without his boots in an effort to get his soles to wear naturally - when he wears his boots, his foot of course doesn't get to wear at all.

You can see how thick the false sole is here, but again, we've decided to help it wear naturally in an effort to keep him comfortable.

We had planned on doing glue-ons for Saga, but after talking through his needs, decided to go with Easyboot Gloves instead. The 2.5 was too small - you can see how it bulges on the sides. He ended up with a 3.5 on both front feet. The Gloves are a little harder to put on then the regular Easyboots, but he works well in them and I think they'll be great for hunting.

Last was Reddums. He has been picking his way around trails he usually stomps down, so we decided to boot him as well. My trimmer didn't have any Gloves in Red's size, just glue-ons (apparently he got the wrong order), so we tried that. Here he's waiting for a sole pack (basically a squishy cushion with some thrush meds in it) to cure before applying the boot.

The glue-ons turned out to be an epic fail. Apparently none of the glue options liked the 102 degree heat combined with the 16% humidity - they all set up before we could even get the boot on, or they didn't set correctly. My poor trimmer tried three different glues, and we couldn't get any of them to work. I ended up going to Callahan's to pick up a pair of Easyboot Epics in size 1. We tried them out this morning and WOW, what a difference! Reddums felt great and, while he started out somewhat tentative, seemed very happy to find that the rocks didn't bother his feet.

Both Red and Saga have similar-looking front feet - good, fat frogs, but deep collateral grooves and a deep groove in the middle of the frog. After reading up about how thrush can be found even in dry hooves (warning, pics of hoof cutaways), I'm starting to think that they both have a deep case of thrush. That would explain Red's newfound hesitancy to walk on rocks - nothing else in his life has changed, especially his diet. So, I am now treating them both daily for thrush. I've been reading up on the best thrush treatments (other than White Lightning, which I don't see myself using) and still need to do more research - for now I still have some Thrush Buster left, so I'll probably use that up and then move on.

Saga was super-excited about the whole process. In fact, he took a nap while resting his nose on the barn wall. Notice the drooping lower lip and the teefs showing? Yup, that's my boy.